My Other Favorite Hobbies
I've always been interested in taking panoramic images and today's hardware and software for capturing, stitching, and displaying panoramic images is fantastic. Many of these panoramas started as multiple images captured with a regular camera, and stitched together with either PTGui Pro or Microsoft Research's Image Composite Editor (ICE) which also supports videos. I also owned the original DJI Osmo Mobile, and later the Osmo Pocket camera, both capturing a number of these panoramas.
I've used a number of cameras to create these spherical equirectangular images. My Google Pixel cell phones have all featured a PhotoSphere mode, my DJI drones have a panorama mode called Sphere, and I've owned Insta360 and a Rylo 360 degree cameras, which feature dual fish-eye camera lenses that take 360 degree images in a single shot. The drone's Sphere panoramas initially don't fill the upper 60 degrees vertical field of view because the camera cannot point that high, but a few editting tricks with PTGUI Pro and Corel Paintshop Pro can semi-realistically fill in that small portion of the view pointing straight up.
These videos were taken with either Insta360 or a Rylo 360 degree cameras. Their cameras feature dual fish-eye lenses on either side of the device, which allows capturing video of an entire 360 degree scene with just the push of a button. Both cameras feature motion stabilization technology, so it's not required to have them mounted on a tripod to get smooth video.The cameras do attempt to erase themselves from the scene, with some success, but many times you will see odd artifacts from that removal attempt. I haven't found many opportunities to take entertaining 360 degree videos, so these are just a few attempts at capturing something worthwhile.
I am very lucky living in the foothills of the Santa Catalina mountains because I am visited regularly by creatures native to the Sonoran Desert. Many of my favorite videos were recorded right in my own front and back yards. Another favorite video location is the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, where they offer "Photo Op Classes" with behind the scenes access to some of the displays and animals throughout the living museum. During much of the year they also have "Raptor Free Flight" sessions and during the recent pandemic offered a small group interactive experience called "Avian Adventures" with owls and hawks. Both of those experiences present wonderful up-close visuals of just a few of the magnificient raptors in the desert.
I'm not a great drone pilot, but I enjoy taking landscape related videos from several hundred feet in the air with my DJI Mavic Pro. The drone is easy to fly, offers 4K video at 30 frames per second, and the software features a variety of "Quickshots" that make for interesting landscape related reveals. Unfortunately, drones are not allowed to fly in many places such as National Parks or over crowds, so many spectacular "birds eye views" are just not possible. But there are still plenty of locations that offer fantastic aerial views and freedom to fly.
The Virtual Tours page contains interactive experiences that combine images, panoramas and videos taken during a few of my trips. The first tour is about my 3 week stay in Orvieto, Italy and the second tour is the entire trip to Italy (which also includes the Orvieto tour). There are also virtual tours of my cruise to New Zealand and Australia as well as a drone 360 degree photo tour from each of the scenic pullouts along the Catalina Highway in the Santa Catalina Mountains near my home.
