Specialized in taking VRs of several abandoned houses, 360Icon is the right address to look for to get scared on a stormy Halloween night.

When I first saw 360icon's images, I thought that - on Halloween night - they could have scared the hell out of anybody. Moreover, once one is told the history behind the scenes. Shot with state to the art's techniques, and great passion, the VR presented within the website, offer an incredible tour of abandoned houses, abandoned prisons, powerplants and cemeteries.

Are you ready to enter these creepy gates?

Edgewood Farm 38 48'08 87N 91 21 47.72W

Jimmy Gill lived in this shed until his death in 2004. He had bought the entire house in 1942, during an action which had been used to settle down the problems arising from heritage. His family had first settled there for four generations, hence 111 years before.

click here to view Edgewood Farm exterior panorama

click here to view Edgewood Farm interior 2 panorama

click here to view Edgewood Farm interior 3 panorama

click here to view Edgewood Farm interior 4 panorama

To read a 1942 news article about Edgewood Farm, look here.
It's difficult to imagine that it had once bustled with life, with parties in September which were bustling with dancers coming from all around the county. At the end of his life, here is where he lived, and here is where he cooked and shaved.

Montgomery City 38 56' 32.53 n 91 28' 42.50 w

click here to view Montgomery panorama

As the photographer says:
" We don't know the history about this one. We parked and were inside this one shooting and my wife was outside. The owners just happened to drive by and see her - this place iis in the middle of nowhere - so I had to go out and talk with them - once they found out what we were doing they thought it was interesting and we were not bandits - they said be careful and then they left...".

Civil war

click here to view Civil war panorama

Owned by a local dentist, who was present when the photographers were shooting, he told them that the house had been in his family for over a century. His uncle had lived there until his death, happened 30 years before. At the beginning the place was a log cabin, which was later expanded and ended by being used by people as a garbage dump. While taking picture, the photographers found a dead goat.

Bunceton

click here to view Bunceton front porch panorama

"In the past five years we were having movie nights at home, with some friend and one day one of the group moved to Colorado. When he discovered about what 360icon was doing, he told us about this place, where his grand dad lived. He took us there and we could take picture. The house cannot be seen from the road and it is now 30 years that nobody lives there anymore. We had to be really careful upstairs, since the floor was decayed".

Cat house

click here to view cat house panorama

"We call this one Cat House because who ever lived here had hundreds of cats. they fed them and threw empty cans on the floor - there were hundreds of them! -. We found several dead cats in this place, one was kind of...melted into the carpet in the front living room! When the owner died and no one was around - some of the cats must have died. Moreover, it looks like the back rooms of the house caught fire, since some rooms are black with smoke".

Interview Kent Durk, the creator of 360Icon:

How do you create those panoramic images? Which are the involved techniques? Which equipment do you use?
We go out every Saturday. We meet at our house at 07.30 AM and head out...Sometimes we neither know where and we keep driving and get lost, until we find the ring one. If we can ask the permission to shot, we do ask, otherwise we just jump the fence and go for it. We have been caught twice and once the owners find out what we are doing, they take interest in our task and show and tell us info we would otherwise have known nothing about. We shoot on a average 2000- 4000+ images on one of our outings.
Everything is shot in Raw, except for the galley photos. Once we get back to the lab, I download the images from the Epson p-3000 to my apple hard drive, load them into adobe lightroom and save them off as 16bit tiffs reduced 65%. Then I write down all the individual panorama frame sequence numbers...from that list I create 16 bit tonemapped images with photomatix and from there I open the tonemapped images up in photoshop and retouch out dust specks and make sure they all are the same size. In the next step, I stitch 5000x2500 16bit tif, then I color correct that rendered image in adobe lightroom and save it in a 8 bit tiff format. After, I create the cube faces uncompressed with cubic converter, add the tripod cap in photoshop to the bottom image, then run them back thru cubic convertor where it gets compressed and sized for the final movie. The movie is run through Pleinpot to create the full screen coding for the internet. I use dreamwever to edit the code for my web interface and CSS. This takes me 20 hours to process and updates on the web site are posted on Sundays or Mondays.

Actually, we believe that we are original in what we are creating! We have not found anyone else on the net who is creating the same type of content, using HDRI and spherical panoramas. The response has been very positive and we are thankful for all the wonderful feedbacks!!

Can you tell us more about your background and passions ?
I have been involved in art & photography for the past 36 years. In my early years, I painted and did a lot of drawings with ink and even made my own prints in a darkroom, using homemade developers. I used to shot black and white, using the zone system. Since I was young all I ever wanted to do is learn about art and photographic techniques and create images. Even 20 years ago I was shooting nude models in abandoned houses and making B&W prints, some of which were on display at the Chicago Art Institute. My current passion is 360icon, going out on weekends, covering new places to photograph and visit the small towns along the countryside, meanwhile meeting some of the townsfolk.

When and how did you start panoramic photography, creating immersive visual art?
In the early 90's I purchased Apple Quicktime VR Authoring Studio 1.0- That software allowed me to create small cylindrical panoramas. Apple did not continue developing that program, so my VR movie making days slowly faded.
Then, about one year ago, I was browsing the internet and discovered what QTVR had evolved into - fullscreen spherical. Wow!
I did some research and bought and tried several different panoheads and software programs, to decide which ones could have been the best equipment to create the type of imagery that I needed to achieve.

Please describe the concept creation of the web site and the involved people ?
As soon as I received my equipment and software - I started shooting anything that came to mind - trees, old cars, real estate...And then, one day, I shot a really old house from 1890. After processing the images, I was hooked! Finally I knew what I wanted to photograph as my subject matter.
In the early days I went by myself to these abandoned houses and I would hear allot of strange noises, often thinking that I had watched too many scary movies.
Moreover, most of these places are really dangerous.

Anyhow, I convinced my wife and my girlfriend to accompany me, and I got a couple of extra digital cameras, so that I could give a few lessons. In a short while, I got them started on shooting the detail images for the photo galleries while I shot the panoramas - it was not long until, they were hooked either.

Can you tell us more about the web site content and features ?
The web site now has over 600 panoramas online all in HDRi. Because of the really dark environments I found that it was important to capture as much details in the scene than a conventional 7 shot panoramas would capture. That's where the HDRi came in, to play some exposures range from 30 seconds to 1/8000 @ f22. This range allows me to capture great shadows to highlight range in these dark places; images that the human eye cannot see.
We plan on continuing for several years, with an additional 1000 panos to be added in 2008. The more we go out on weekends the more places we discover. We know of 12 more places to shot but can only shoot 2-3 houses on a Saturday. In the future we plan on re- visiting some of our favorite locations to photograph them again, in order to show the advanced stages of a decay progresses. There are 2 sections to our web site - Panoramas and Exploration - the pano side is made of single panoramas from each house, with navigation between each scene. The exploration side is made of virtual tours with links between the movies thru hotspots. As things develop, we would like to do some low level aerial panoramas of the locations as well and someday some will me made with flash as well as quicktime.

Do you face peculiar conditions when shooting?
Well, usually the places are freezing. Moreover, we often run into snakes, chiggers and spiders. Light is often really low.

Your panoramas could be very interesting for the gaming and cinema industry.
Did you ever consider this, while creating the content?
No.

Can you tell us more about the panoramic prints you offer?
They are absolutely beautiful. The resolution of the images for the internet is much less than it is for the prints...so the details are much greater than in the VR movies. They are print with Epson Ultrachome 7 ink pigments, printed professionally on Epson coated luster paper. All prints are archival and will last for 100 years. They range in size from 40 x 16" to 70 x 30". We can custom made, but we can not frame them. The order processing and delivery usually takes 2 to 3 weeks and the payments are made through Paypal.

What equipment do you use?
Here the list is long....
Canon EOS 5D, Nikon Coolpix 8400, Sony DSC f707 with wide angle attachment, various tripods and bogen swivel heads, Canon 15mm 2.8 fisheye, Canon 20-35mm wide angle, Sigma circular fisheye, Canon remote switch rs-80n, Sandisk 4gb memory cards, Epson p-3000 40gb memory card backup, Apple Intel quad 2.8 ghz, Manfrotto 755XB MDeVe tripod, 360precision Absolute panorama head, Really Right Stuff Ultimate-Pro Omni-Pivot, Kaidan QuickPan Pro, RealViz Stitcher, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Dreamweaver, Photomatix Pro, Pleinpot, Cubic Convertor, Off Deep Woods Bug spray.......

Any future projects at the horizon?
We have 12 more locations and 100's yet to be discovered - I have met someone from the Kansas City, MO urban explorers group, and we plan on going to Kansas city this spring to photograph some industrial environments. I am currently documenting the Missouri theatre center for the arts - its a theatre here in Columbia, MO that's been here since 1920. It's undergoing a major multi dollar renovation. More panos will be posted as the renovation continues through its completion next month.

What professional services do you offer?
Spherical panoramas and prints for kiosks, web and display.

anything else you like to add ?
Oh yes. I would like to thank all the people who have visited our web site, plus all the people that have let us photograph there creepy old houses!

Links:
360icon.com
Email: info at 360icon.com