2007 IVRPA CONFERENCE IN BERKELEY Videos of the sessions are now available. by Robert C. Fisher
For a VR photographer it was pure heaven, spending a week with over 100 other photographers talking about VR and shooting around the Berkeley, CA area. There were many sessions available about such subjects as Real Estate, business, stitching and other aspects of the interactive photography world. With many newcomers to VR the day long VR 101 was packed and offered help for tackling difficult aspects of VR like stitching, which is always high on the list for newbys.
The Plenary sessions were also heavily attended with many different sessions on all aspects of Interactive photography. xRes,a new company started by long time member Greg Downing and Eric Hansen, presented their current work and their vision for utilizing gigapixel photography in new and exciting ways.
Ian Woods talked about his work with the Landmarks of Britain project. Matt Uyttendaele and Drew Steedly of Microsoft Research demonstrated HD View and the exciting application Photosynth which is an amazing new application using photography and 3D for a new take on virtual tours.
The conference wasn’t all work though, Sunday evening there was the dinner at the Hillside Club as well as the Keynote Address presented by Professor Helmut Dersch. The Panoramic contest winners were announced by Patrick Cheatham, with the assistace of Mark Blanton, RealViz, and Landis Bennett, with many of the winners from across the pond. Many unorganized activities highlighted the conference, such as the last afternoon that 30 or 40 of us invaded the La Val’s Pizza across the street from the campus for pizza and beer, mostly beer!
The organizers, Don Bain, Landis and Kat Bennett and Patrick Cheatham, worked very hard to make sure there were lots of photographic opportunities in the scenic San Francisco Bay area. Trips included the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, and an awesome but grueling walking tour of historic San Francisco.
This is the third VR Photography conference we have shot videos of the sessions in the hope of getting them out to a wider audience. This year we have them available for purchase by either downloading them online or in a collection on 2 DVDs. I have tried to make the quality of the presentations as high as possible, considering our very small as in No, budget for this. We will have 11 of the sessions available for purchase, roughly about half, and the Keynote Address by Prof. Dersch which is free for everyone.
I am hoping to start including some of the videos from the other conferences as well in the near future. Information on the conference videos is available at IVRPA or at cfish-Media’s website. The response so far has been great and I am hoping that in the future we can include more sessions and content.
