More About Local Wonder
An earlier post presented the idea of “Local Wonder” as a starting point for a sort of vision for my photography. In that case, the focus was on looking closely at things to see their wonderful aspects. In addition to giving a focus for some photography, the hope is that it could also teach me to be more aware in general.
There is another aspect to being more aware that, ironically, didn’t occur to me at first, but was the first focus for my 360 photography – that it is also important to look around.
Read more
Neskowin Ghost Forest
This is the Neskowin Ghost Forest, a grove of trees that was buried in sand around 2000 years ago.
Although many reports claim that these trees were buried in an earthquake, the best consensus is that they were buried by gradual dune encroachment. This often happens on coastlines.
This buried forest was uncovered in 1997-8 during a winter of El Niño storms and have been exposed ever since.
Read more Avery Park
This is the rose garden in a local park at mid-morning as the sun is just starting to illuminate it.
Taken at the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere, new growth is just starting. This picture was taken as my initial entry in the World Wide Panorama (WWP) “Wrinkle” project, in which 360 panoramas will be taken all over the world during the 24-our period surrounding each solstice and equinox.
I hope to take all of the Wrinkle pictures here, although perhaps in slightly different spots, to show the change of seasons in the garden.
The Wrinkle project is to take multiple pictures at the same time but at different locations. With luck, my entries will also be the compliment of that — taking multiple pictures at the same location but at different times.
New Version of UPCA Church Interior
This is an updated version of a previous post of the interior of United Presbyterian Church in Albany, Oregon.
Read moreMajestic Falls Again
This is Majestic Falls, the main waterfall at McDowell Creek Falls county park.
Read more Frameless Pictures
When photographs are printed and hung on a wall, they often have a frame and a matte. Sometimes though, photographers, like other visual artists, choose to display their pictures without a frame – so-called “frameless” mounting. The picture here is an example of that.
This example does have a solid side, but sometimes frameless mounts don’t even have that – they may be mounted flat on the wall, or have a small hidden mount behind the picture so that it appears to be floating in front of the wall. In any case, the point is that there is nothing in the same plane as the picture itself.
Read more 
VR Photography and Museums
For a recent 360 photography project, I took a VR photograph inside of an old, water-powered mill that has been turned into a state park: Thompson’s Mills in Shedd, Oregon. The purpose was to make a picture for the Worldwide Panorama Project quarterly theme of “Museums”. The picture here is a “little planet” view of that panorama.
This seemed like an interesting choice because it illustrated two different expressions of the museum concept in one photograph. The first expression is the familiar one of a building full of artifacts and stories. This is what most people probably think of when they hear the word museum.
Read more Consciousness and Spherical Photography
Previously I have written about how spherical photography can be a metaphor for looking around, and how it illustrates the value of doing so. There is no comparable way to change the view in standard photography, of course. However, we can still choose what part of a photograph to focus on.
Generally, however, our eyes move around a photograph without much conscious effort, and photographers often design pictures to guide the viewer’s gaze through the use of color, composition, and so on. The general tendency is to follow the artist’s lead.
With spherical photographs, however, we not only have the ability to look around more, but that action is generally much more deliberate. Instead of the unconscious movements of our eyes, viewing a spherical photo involves moving a mouse, or swiping on a screen, or moving our head while wearing a special headset. In any case, it is a much more deliberate, conscious effort.
This difference between static photographs and interactive spherical photographs allows us to explore some of the ideas around what is meant by “conscious” in this sense. It typically refers to an act done with deliberation and full awareness. Implying, among other things, that there is a mind, a consciousness, involved.
We use this term easily; it seems to be something that we all understand even though the nature of consciousness itself is still a mystery. Are we just the result of chemical reactions, so that looking at a spherical picture just involves different chemical reactions? Or is there more to us than that, something beyond the material, such that the viewing intent is as mysterious and non-physical as our minds?
This is a question that science has not yet answered. It’s not even clear if science can answer it since it may involve things beyond the physical, material world. Even defining the problem is still a challenge. Thus, we may need additional tools, which is why some mind researchers have suggested that the arts offer interesting insights into the nature of consciousness.
Perhaps photography can play a role here, and that is one of the reasons that spherical photography is more interesting than just another way to create pictures. Perhaps it can help explore the mystery of consciousness.
For, if the mind is more than just material, this has big implications for our understanding of all reality, of the whole universe.
Viewing Spherical Photos as Cylinders
Previously, I described an alternative way to represent pointers to spherical photos. Usually they are static online pictures, which works since a hyperlink can then send the viewer to the full, interactive picture. However, another possibility is to make the pointer a physical picture, printed out and maybe even hung on the wall.
The same thing can be done with the spherical picture itself. Ideally, the pictures represent the inside of a sphere, the view one gets when looking around. However, it can be printed on the outside of a sphere, and the experience of viewing it still more or less works.
Such spheres have been made, and it’s possible to order something very near from companies who will print them on pieces that snap together. Also, some people have experimented with mapping the picture to the outside of a cube, which gives six fixed views. That’s obviously less interactive, but still gives some idea.
In many spherical pictures, though, the top and bottom are not interesting. These represent looking up and down. A spherical picture taken outside while standing on cement, for example, would just have sky above and gray below – not very interesting.
This leads to another possibility: removing the top and bottom, straightening the sides, and making a cylinder by printing it on the outside.
Viewing a cylinder just means rotating it so that the area of interest is seen. Seems like this should work naturally.
A small cylinder could be the size of a Christmas ornament, while a larger one could sit on some sort of stand. On a stand, the viewer could easily turn it, approximating the experience of panning left or right in a regular online spherical photo. In addition, the stand could be motorized so that the cylinder moves on its own, just like online versions sometimes automatically pan around.
Going even further, the user could interact with the motorized system to be gently directed to certain views. There are more options for placing lighting inside the cylinder, coupling cylinders, generating the view dynamically from a projector instead of printed, and so on.
It seems like this approach has a lot of interesting possibilities, and I may end up building some to check them out.