Going Full Circle

Months ago I downloaded a $0.99 iPhone app called 360Panorama made by a company called Occipital. After checking it out for a few minutes, it was filed away in folder called "photo" and left unused and neglected. 

Our company SmithBucklin holds a few annual corporate events at hotels in Chicago and Washington, D.C. We usually take a few photos to use in the planning of future events. This year someone said, "wouldn't it be great if we could get a panorama image of this room." And it was then that I remembered the 360Panorama app already downloaded and ready to use. Within a few minutes, I was able to create a really nice interactive panorama that could be uploaded to a webpage and share with others. Creating a panorama is now "standard protocol" for the corporate events we hold. 

The 360Panoram app is very easy to use. You slowly move the iPhone camera in a circle to fill in a grid and when complete, save the image. You can then upload it to a personal page provided by Occipital. Below is a panorama created near our office in Chicago. 
 

Experimenting in Low Resolution

A few weeks ago, neighbor and friend Scott suggested that I give Instagram a try. With very little knowledge about this iPhone app, I was somewhat reluctant to jump into another social media platform. But, based on Scott's recommendation, I decided to download the free app.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover 15 million images (as of December 2011) neatly organized and searchable by users and hash tags. I quickly found really terrific low resolution photos of favorite subjects such as the Wrigley Building, Lake Michigan and Cape Cod. It seems that Instragram is for iPhone image-makers what Flickr, and other photo-sharing websites, are for DSLR photographers.

I posted a few images and within a week had a handful of "favorited" images and some "followers." Once comfortable with Instagram, I started incorporating other iPhone image software, such as Photogene and Photo Collage to work in concert with the Instagram tools. This image of the Wrigley Building in Chicago is an example of using Photo Collage before Instagram.



Also, Instagram can send iPhone generated images to other social media platforms inclduing: Twitter, Facebook and Flickr or by email. Here are a few more of the low resolution images from recent experimentation. Click on the image to see the full-size (612 X 612 pixel) image.