Our friends at Burien Parks recently shot and created some pretty cool 360-degree photos of Seahurst Park, which may inspire you to make a trip – in real life! – out to one of our city’s wonderful parks. After clicking on “Click to view,” use your cursor to drag the photos around and take a look all around: View of North Beach Area: View from The Nori Picnic Shelter Area: View from The Coral Picnic Area: View from Sea Star Picnic Area: Here’s some background info from Parks Director Michael Lafreniere:
I set up a digital camera on a tripod, then simply start taking lots of pictures, panning up and down or left and right, and taking a picture each time. Then incrementally moving the camera horizontally about 15 degrees, sometimes also taking several photos panning vertically. Eventually I end up with LOTS of photos. The key thing that makes the software work best at creating a better panoramic is to keep the camera in the same position, i.e. all the photos taken from the same point in space. The next step involves taking all the pictures and importing them into a free software program from Microsoft called Image Composite Editor (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/ice/). A very easy program to use, just dragging and dropping all the files into the program, and it does all the work. That’s it! After several minutes, it’s done processing the pictures and creating the seamless overlap and integration of all the photos. Then I create some hotspots of interest, calling out key facilities in the shot. The final step is uploading the resulting image file to Burien Parks’ free account at Microsoft’s Photosynth website (www.photosynth.net). I’m hoping to hear from residents what their favorite spots are in our other parks and have them nominate a future 360 photoshoot venue.To let Michael know your idea for a favorite spot for one of these cool 360-photos, send an email to MichaelL@burienwa.gov. To check out all of Burien’s Parks, click here: http://www.burienparks.net.]]>
