SoWeBo (South West Baltimore) Festival - Baltimore, MD	Street Car #19 -Budapest, Hungary	'Miracle on 34th Street' - Xmas Decorations - Baltimore, MD
Breakdancers at Artscpe 2004 - Baltimore, MD	Yardsale - Baltimore, MD	Harmonica Man - Budapest, Hungary

Andras Frenyo fits all of these characteristics. Born and raised in Budapest, Frenyo was his high school’s photographer and his father’s nemesis in the kitchen, often converting it into a darkroom. Eager to leave Hungary, he settled in the U.S. as a young adult and now raises his family and conducts his VR photography business, Spherical Photo, in Baltimore. He acknowledges that creating a VR business has been challenging and believes that “VR photography by itself has little commercial market value unless it is part of an application that can provide a practical function, and hence, return to the investor”. Therefore, he provides other web-based services, something that has won him competitive work when VR photography alone would not have sufficed.

When Frenyo isn’t working, he spends his time on pet projects, most notably the Sziget Festival, a pop music and cultural event held in Budapest each summer. He organized the recent launch of Sziget 2005 Media Farm, an intensive project dedicated to covering and cataloguing the annual event in various media formats – panoramas, photos and video – while also providing ample opportunity for Frenyo to immerse himself in his favorite subjects: people and events.

Frenyo is a busy guy, running two other blogs: PanoramaBlog contains panos that bear witness to his passion for family, friends and the events in his life; and Bmoreblog, a slice-of-life look at Baltimore, was recently profiled in the city paper’s ‘Best of Baltimore’ issue as the Best View of Baltimore From Your Couch.

Can you tell us about your background – where you grew up in Hungary, and how you came to settle in Baltimore?

I was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary. Although I applied to study law, I mostly aspired to leave Hungary right after high school. At the time, prospects not aligning with the overwhelming party line were dim. Not to say that I was that politically aware, but I was rather longing for the adventure I would otherwise not have been allowed to travel and encounter. As visa requirements eased to Austria, I took a trip to Vienna, not to return to Budapest for a long time (with Dad's silent approval, my sister's vehement disapproval and my mother not knowing about it at all until after the fact). Having been granted political asylum by the American Consulate, I found a sponsor in a person of Baltimorean abode, and soon I was earning my degree at the University of Maryland. I started bartending then, and worked through innumerable restaurants and neighborhoods over the years (well beyond those I was still degree seeking). I made my home in Baltimore.

How did you become interested in VR photography?

I was a self-proclaimed school photographer during the four years I spent at my Budapest high school. Splitting the cost of a camera and an enlarger, my best friend and I spent endless nights in our small kitchen, which we converted into a dark room several days a week - to my dad's greatest fear of eventually poisoning the whole family. While the latter didn't happen, photography stuck, although I never had formal training. I have made numerous efforts to dig out my first panoramas shot in Transylvania many years later. The first megapixel cameras were about to hit the market. I have not been able to find these images so far, but I suspect they were taken in 1996 or 1997. I honestly cannot remember the first VR I saw, nor when the enthusiasm turned into hobby, then obsession before learning to find ways to make it into more than just something cool you can spin and zoom.

Was there anyone in particular that influenced you to choose this particular path in photography?

Originally I was drawn to panoramic images by the technology involved - which I found fascinating, without really understanding it. Helmut Dersch’s work must have had a similar effect on many others, and it was his newsgroup that brought together the people whose photography first inspired me. Ben Kreunen, GummyBear and Jook Leung were among the first contributors

What are you most passionate about within the realm of VR photography?

Getting into VR photography at its early stage and remaining tapped into the community has the obvious advantage of becoming a first person eyewitness to its evolution, growing applications and aspirations for the future. These changes and developments over the past years is what are most amazing to me. Mainly, because much of it is purely community driven.

After overcoming the fascination with the technology involved, I became a firm believer that VR photography is first and foremost still photography, an art and the technical coolness that's paired with it is only an improvement if it serves that primary purpose. Flattened, 'flexified' and otherwise rendered/remapped VR images speak to this clearly. This is my personal view only, and I can't argue that the same technology also makes it a prime candidate for commercial applications, where the art may still be present in the form of wizardry but is often lost on the imagery.

As my first attempts during my high school days, and still today, my primary focus remains people and events while I continue to strive to learn to capture some unique architectual perspectives only super wide-angle photography makes possible. I am in awe of the great works of object photography out there, but have not had the chance to go as far with it as I’d like. I’m inspired by the work of Greg Downing, and if the day had 36 hours in it, I’d set aside 12 of them to learn photogrammetry.

Among the new developments, I am most excited about the video applications, those that go beyond the idea of driving around with a camera attached to the top of a car. Concept Factory's linear videos created from spherical shots, intertwined with graphics and set to music are great examples of what can be done. Jonathan Wilkinson ’s 360 art video work (employing Bill Meikle’s Sprit-o-Rama engine) will certainly set precedents to yet more great work in this area. Immersive Media just passed through town a short time ago sporting a pretty powerful yet small setup. Having looked at the samples out of their camera – “Wow” is all I can say: 2400x1200pixels, 30 fps full spherical video in an easily portable packaging.

You offer professional services through your website, Spherical Photo – can you give us an idea of the demand for VR services in the Baltimore area? How do you advertise your services? Are real estate tours still the most popular requests for work you get?

The main problem I believe all VR photographers face as far as demand for their work is concerned is this: people cannot demand what they do not know exists, or don't understand the benefits of. VR photography by itself has little commercial market value unless it is part of an application that can provide a practical function and hence return to the investor. While interest in my photography has greatly increased in the past two years in the Baltimore area, and my photos have been published in print and on the web, trying to sell a complete product has remained a great challenge.

The most lucrative jobs I’ve had came from private persons who asked me to create virtual tours of their home. I also have a line of references stemming from VR photography I’d done for a local interior design firm. I created a web VR application for museums two years ago that might now finally be coming to its fruition with one completed and several pending orders. In either one of these cases, I wouldn't have won the bid if it hadn't been for also offering additional photography or web work related to the project. I only recently decided to get involved in real estate and am in the middle of negotiations with a large residential agency, as well as a contractor who has been repurposing old industrial buildings in the city.

I believe putting out fresh samples of one's work regularly is of key importance and lacking the time to market my services, almost on all occasions I’ve been sought out by potential clients based on my VRs posted online, which I do through several domain names.

I hope this doesn't sound like I’m ducking the questions; truth be told, I am still learning the ways to best sell VRs, mostly through finding openings for them in already existing applications, or developing applications for them through collaboration of experts in related fields.

You recently launched Sziget 2005 Media Farm with a large collection of panos from the annual pop festival held in Budapest, which you have been capturing with panos for several years now. What drove your ambition to record this festival in multimedia?

I love the Sziget Festival! It is a tremendous yearly undertaking of crossing cultures, nationalities and art forms. I have been creating VRs from this event since 2001, as it provides all my favorite subject matters; the people, the events and even some structural feats. It mobilizes the city and, love it or hate it, everyone in its ever-expanding radius must contend with it.

The purpose of the project was to create a re-purposable, customizable, rich media content management system.

While Sziget blogs and fan sites are popping up internationally, and thousands of photographs are viewable, VRs of the event are hard to find and there's no site dedicated to covering the event in various media formats. While we set out to do more, I am satisfied with the results and consider the collaboration a great success. The website was developed in advance, and the robust content management system made it possible for us to post panoramas, photos and video footage every day of the festival. The immersive media offers replay not only to visitors of the festival, but artists and organizers alike for referencing their work for future events. We hope to do more with audio and video (both linear and panoramic) in the upcoming year.

What other photographers did you collaborate with for this project and what are the project’s goals?

I was extremely lucky to get help from some great people. I would like to thank them again and hope they have recuperated from the days of no sleep as well as the fear, cram and rattle of the Trabant.

Daniel Maurer is responsible for the CMS and all the still photographs in addition to several panoramas and the 360 video footage. Aldo Hoeben shot some brilliant panoramas with a last minute penny-rig and tweaked his SPi-V engine to add a robust hardware accelerated alternative to QuickTime on the site. Bernhard Vogl found us on the island with the sole aid of his trusty GPS all the way from Vienna, and produced one of the signature panoramas a mere half an hour after setting foot on festival grounds (which he followed with many more in a single day). We ran intoTamas Varga, a local VR photographer at the festival, who also lent a panorama to the project.

We are looking forward to growing the site during next year's event and hope to deploy the content management system for other applicable projects.

What advice would you offer those considering entering the VR photography field as professionals?

I think recent hardware and software developments have made VR creation technically painless for the most part, even if it often remains laborious. Documentation is abundant, suitable equipment is affordable and widely available. VR technology itself is not new, but applications tapping into its possible benefits are still few in comparison. Anyone getting involved must realize that VR creation itself (unless for art's sake only) is a relatively small step toward creating a marketable product. If one decides to dedicate her/himself to VR photography, one also best prepare for the ambassadorship that comes with the territory and keep an open eye and mind toward the community which is constantly growing this field in amazing leaps and into newly emerging directions.

What VR equipment and software do you use and recommend?

In most cases I use a fuji s2 with an 8mm nikkor lens. This combination allows for speedy photography and a compact (though not lightweight!) setup, which is often the key for my action shots. Four images yield a manageable panorama width of around 6000 pixels, although this can be increased. I find this size to be a good fit for most print requirements and the stitching/processing time reasonable on a moderately fast computer. I also use the same camera with a nikkor 10.5 mounted on a 360 precision head, reaching a somewhat higher native resolution and sharpness (ca. 8000 pixels wide panoramas). The processing time for these panoramas however is close to double, although the panorama head itself provides for a great deal of repeatability.

If I were to recommend equipment, it would be the latter, or something comparable in the way of the camera and lens, as I believe it to be the most productive multi-purpose setup for the price.

I do most of my stitching on a PC, and use panorama tools with ptGUI (ptMac would be the Macintosh equivalent). The latter provides an excellent front end and flattens the learning curve to the software originated by Helmut Dersch. This is also what I would recommend first and foremost, admitting that I am not much experienced with Realviz's Stitcher, perhaps the most serious contender in the same category and who have just released a new version.

For those less inspired to invest the time, I often recommend Panavue, which allows for a good degree of manual control on top of fully animated stitching and - in its newest version - offers excellent blending and multilayer Photoshop output. Again, I must note that vrWorx (which I use exclusively for object movie creation) is just out with a new version with major improvements and features added.

Email: afrenyo[at]sphericalphoto[dot]com