Initial Ideas

From the initial suggested themes, the ideas I have expanded on are tourist guide, day in a life, and sense of location.  For each of these ideas, I would like to keep the pictures in a local setting, which would be around the countryside of East Sussex. 
Fora tourist quide, I could go to higher up places such as Ditchling Beacon to take pictures of the local area from a distance. Pictures from high up give a feel for the area and would be fitting for tourist guide. Pictures from high up places could also work for the other themes, especially sense of location. For this idea, I was thinking of taking photos of various places that are close to me, such as around my house and village, and then one picture from a nearby area.
A picture from when I live could also work for day in a life as well, since it shows where I would start my own day.

From these first ideas, I think I would like to stick with the theme of sense of location, since I could use imagery  from around the country and places close to where I live to show the area around where I live.

Research Into Panoramic Photopgraphy

"Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialised equipment or software, that captures images with elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography. The term has also been applied to a photograph that is cropped to a relatively wide aspect ratio."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panoramic_photography


"an unobstructed and wide view of an extensive area in all directions."
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/panorama


In my own words, panoramic images are photographs of large areas taken with a wide aspect ratio. They are generally used to show landscapes which would not fit in a regular photograph.



This photo is an example of a regular panoramic image, which shows a full landscape. These are made by using a wide lens or editing the photos together in an image editor.


As well as regular panoramic photos, there are also VR panoramas, which are what I will be making in this project..


"VR Panoramas are panoramic images which surround the viewer with an environment (inside, looking out), yielding a sense of place. They can be "stitched" together from several normal photographs or 2 images taken with a circular fisheye lens, or captured with specialised panoramic cameras, or rendered from 3D-modeled scenes. There are two type of VR Panorama:

• Single row panoramas, with a single horizontal row of photographs.
• multi-row panoramas, with several rows of photographs taken at different tilt angles."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_VR#Panoramas

In my own words, VR panoramas are images that are taken in a full circle around the photographer, which are then put together to make a full photo. There are two different types of panorama, one of which shows a horizontal landscape, and another which can give a more 3D view, which is done my taking pictures at different angles. 

VR panoramas can be made interactive on the web using code to move the image around. Photographers such as Will Pearson have made websites to show off panoramic photos in this way (http://www.willpearson.co.uk/)

This is an example of a VR panorama from Will Pearson's website. This image can be zoomed in and out, and can also be dragged to show the full 3D landscape. 
     
This is another example of Will Pearson's work. The 3D interactivity of this website can make a simple landscape view much more interesting as you can see it from every angle.

VR panoramas can give a better sense of location than regular panoramas, as they can be viewed from any angle, and they give the viewer a sense of interactivity when shown on a website. They also provide a greater sense of detail compared to regular panoramas as more time is needed to edit all the images together.