Strahov 40 Gigapixel (SMALL VERSION) in Prague
View all panoramas by Jeffrey Martin
Strahov 40 Gigapixel (SMALL VERSION) in Prague
I discovered panoramic photography in the year 2000 after getting my first digital camera (a canon digital elph) which came with its own primitive panorama stitching software. Soon after that I imagined that a virtual tour of Prague, one of the world's most beautiful cities, would be a great idea. I first worked on prague360.com with Adam Trachtman. At the time, there were no google maps (or any other mapping API) available for Prague, and it took some time to even find a high-resolution street map of Prague that could be used for this purpose. The original site used a flash-based map component combined with panoramas in the QTVR format.
After a year, my brother David stepped in and we started working together on it. At about the same time, the global content of Google Maps became much more complete, and it made sense to use it to help map our panoramic photos. It was not long before we decided that this idea could be applied to the whole world....
Besides working as Founder/CEO of 360Cities I am still a very active photographer. I enjoy the experimental aspects of photography, usually related to panoramic and 360 photography: Gigapixel photography and timelapse especially. I am also working on various aspects of the automation of panoramic photo stitching. One of the principal goals of my job is to bring panoramic photography to the mainstream, and this means simplifying the creation and publication of these images.
While this medium of 360 photography has come a long way in the last decade, I think it is only now starting to be utilized in the ways it deserves - as a navigational tool, as a presentation tool, and as a documentary tool. But this is only the beginning! I hope you're enjoying the ride :-)
