Biela has organized the Summit Series, held in Sedona last year and Savannah, Georgia this October, for the last four years. He’s also been busy with Apple’s ‘Nuts and Bolts of QuickTime VR’ seminar series, traveling all over the U.S., Canada and Asia teaching novices the ins-and-outs of QTVR. “One of the reasons I do the QTVR series and the Summit,” he explains “is because I think the knowledge that you gain from it is very important … the more I give out the more I learn.”

Photographer Jen Siow first met Biela at one of his seminars in Kuala Lumpur and credits this “big magnet” with getting him hooked on QTVR. “Whenever he is in Malaysia his seminars are full,” Siow says. “While he is ‘big’ to Asians, he has a charming way of reaching out to people, which makes them feel at ease with him.” Siow, who describes himself as Biela’s greatest fan, reports that Biela’s success in the U.S. VR industry is much admired in Malaysia, inspiring many there to take up VR seriously.

Photographer Loren Price, who has worked with Biela on the Summit series, also uses the word ‘magnetic’ in describing the man: “Dennis has a unique outlook on things, kind of like Alfred E. Newman – ‘what me worry’! It’s a lethal combination that has a kind of magnetic power, drawing people towards him. Dennis has a gift for gab when it comes to QuickTime VR,” Price continues. “Just ask him something about it and sit back and soak it in. When he gets going, it’s kind of hard to stop him. Just ask anyone who has sat in on one of his sessions.”

Over the last couple years, Biela worked on cataloguing aircraft for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum – work that is still in progress and dependent on further funding. The museum has been using the VRs in kiosks with great success and soon Biela will be shooting SpaceShipOne for the museum, winner of the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

Born in Aurora, a suburb of Chicago, he still calls the place home, even though he spends three-quarters of the year on the road. (For instance, this past year he traveled around the U.S. with the QuickTime Bug, creating QuickTime content of the places he visits while also speaking at colleges and universities about QuickTime and photography.) After studying photojournalism in college, Biela spent the early part of his career specializing in automobile photography, shooting for Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, BMW and General Motors, eventually moving from commercials to QTVR. Today, Biela offers his consulting, photography and lecturing services through his company Lightspeed Media.

For a man who has spent so much time on the road and abroad you’d expect a few good stories, and Biela doesn’t disappoint: At last year’s Summit in Sedona he had our table in stitches as he recounted his (mis) adventures in China, a tale that starts with him being flipped by a cable off a ship’s top deck and landing on the deck below.

Dennis Biela kindly agreed to share his story again with VRMag readers, along with details on his lengthy career and advice for novices who hope to become VR professionals.

Dennis, let’s start at the beginning, with your background.

I always wanted to be an artist, always wanted to draw, but even stick people are difficult for me. I found though that I could pick up a camera and take pretty decent pictures – this was back in junior high. So I started taking pictures when I got to high school. I did all the usual things, worked for the school newspaper, the yearbook, and also freelanced for some local newspapers. And I found a really interesting thing – women love having their pictures taken. So, besides taken pictures I also found it was a great avenue for meeting people, especially girls. After high school I went on to college, actually won a scholarship, and studied photojournalism, which was my major. I also studied aviation. Once I graduated I would do seminars and go to big photo events, anyplace where I thought I could learn more or pick up more information and ways to improve my craft.

I started out my career pretty much on my own. I freelanced for some newspapers, had my own little studio, just did jobs that came by, shot the mandatory weddings just to pick up cash, just the normal things photographers do when they start out their careers. After a while I became burned out, so I got out of photography and into aviation. My father thought it was a phase, he was always a big supporter of my work and thought I’d be back to photography.

During this time in my life I worked on a project where I went to Germany with Porsche. I met a girl over there, just before I left, and learned another thing about women: they’re expensive. They want things. So going to MacDonald’s ain’t gonna cut it anymore. I needed to get a job, so I went back to photography and started freelancing for a twice-weekly newsletter back, and that led to working for larger newspapers and eventually magazines. At one point I was working for a lifestyle magazine, I called it the ‘Rich and Insane’ because when you have so much money you really don’t think normally anymore. I had to photograph this one person Tom Collier of Colliers Magazine fame and at the time he had, like, 170 Porsches – who needs that many Porsches? Anyway, it got me hooked on cars when I was photographing him for the story, and then I had to photograph a guy by the name of Joe Marchety who had a large Ferrari collection. So doing cars for a series of stories about rich or famous people and their cars, I got hooked. I started specializing in cars; eventually I did magazines stories and then commercial work. And I noticed that the commercial guys, at least in my mind, were making more money than I was for shooting the same things, so I migrated from shooting for the photojournalism magazines, moving on to shooting commercially and I did a lot of large projects – work for General Motors, Mercedes Benz, BMW of North America.

How did you move from photojournalism and commercial shoots into QTVR?

Well, I started out seaming digitally back in the mid-90s, looking for a way to pay off my $30,000 digital camera, the first one I ever owned and the most expensive thing I owned outside of an airplane. I read somewhere about QTVR from Apple and they actually had some tools out there so I went downloaded their free tools and started playing around with QTVR. Eventually I got to know some people at Apple and I got a copy of QTVR Authoring Studio, played around and got hooked. At the time, when I was shooting the car projects, the automotive industry was one of the largest users of QTVR - in fact I still think they are - I started shooting car interiors with QTVR and did some stuff for BMW, and eventually I started specializing in QTVR and less in the commercial car.

What is your past and current involvement with the IVRPA (formerly IQTVRA)?

I was doing a series of seminars with Apple on QTVR and I knew about the association. In San Francisco I met some people, like Loren Price, who I wanted to get involved in my seminars so I helped promote QTVR. I don’t do a lot with the organization; in fact, I used to be a big joiner of organizations and belonged to several different groups but now I tend to stay away as it takes up a lot of my time. I focus more on my own projects and what I’m doing, but I’m always willing to help and if people from a group ask me to speak I’m willing to help that way.

I run a conference called the Summit Series, currently in its fourth year - this year it will be held in Savannah, Georgia - and the IVPRA is one of the sponsors of the event.

You travel throughout the world, or at least North America and Asia, giving the ‘Nuts and Bolts of QTVR’ seminars for Apple Computers. Can you tell us more about these seminars, where they’re held and who attends?

It’s kind of involved, I got started with the seminar because I got injured on the job while in China and hadn’t worked for seven or eight months. I had done a series of seminars for Apple Computer on digital imaging so they said why don’t we prop you up in the corner and you can talk and people will pay you for that. I needed money so I agreed.

Everybody figured I’d do a series on digital imaging or color management and I came back and said I wanted to do a seminar on QTVR, which they had never done. Apple agreed to try it out and see how well it went. They had never really expected me to come back with that and they weren’t sure how it would be received. I came up with the name and they got a website up and it was one of the most successful seminar series that Apple had ever done.

Originally I was going to do 10 to 12 seminars. I went out to find sponsors to pay for it and got VRToolBox, Kaidan, Canon, Nikon and several other manufacturers, who I’m still involved with today. Anyway, we were only going to do 10, and then there were requests for others…it ended up being 44 in North America and then another dozen in Asia and Australia, and a couple in Europe. I’d like to do more in Europe but just haven’t had the venues. It was easy for me to talk to people in Asia because the capitals are regionalized but the Europeans seem to be a little more difficult in terms of setting it up.

I did 44 presentations and was on the road literally all the time. It became a long-term thing, we ran the seminar series for about two years and there’s talk about me doing some more, possibly in Europe, so we’ll see how that goes.

The seminars are held in a lot of different locations; I’ve spoken at schools, colleges, rented facilities like auditoriums and somebody’s house once. I usually get 80 to 90 percent attendance, so if 100 people sign up, 80 to 90 actually show up, which is a pretty good attendance and Apple was pleased with the numbers. In Vancouver, Canada the line actually went around the building and I had to give an extra presentation just to get all the people in.

There’s a wide range of people who attend. There are what I call tire kickers – they’ll sign up for anything that sounds interesting - web designers, graphic artists, and photographers. I usually have a pretty consistent mix, say 40% photographers, 40% graphic artists/web designers and the balance are tire kickers. I’ve had people from the military and government – all types of people who are interested to learn how they can use this cool technology called QTVR.

How much of your time do these seminars take up, and do you also still do consulting work for QTVR-related projects?

I didn’t do as many seminars the past few years but I still do some, probably a month to 10 weeks of my time total. I still travel to Asia and do a few there. Apple changed the way they handle seminars; they now focus on doing things through their stores. I’ve also being doing my own VR projects that have taken up lots of my time, so when I’m not working I prefer not to do anything. I hope to do more seminars in the future, so that could expand again. Right now I have a contract with the Smithsonian for five more years to shoot VR.

I don’t do so much consulting work but I am doing a lot more VR projects. Right now I’m doing a hotel chain, 50+ hotels in the northwest. I got to travel up to Canada and Alaska; lots of very interesting places shooting VR. That was literally two months on the road shooting the stuff and then another month in postproduction. It’s a very good project for my company, Lightspeed Media.

I still get lots of emails on QTVR, about 200 a day after spam, so I don’t always get to emails as fast as I would like, but I still try to help out. I also have a CD called Nuts and Bolts of QTVR (available on my website) that I’m currently updating and the new version will be out soon. I’m consulting on a couple cool projects, one of them I’ll be taking over the project shoot, towards the end of the year. Unfortunately I can’t discuss the particulars yet but it has to do with a government institution and it’ll be in a scientific field, so it’ll be a pretty major thing, and we’re pretty excited about that.

Any interesting travel adventures you’d care to share?

There are plenty of stories of my travels from my Nuts and Bolts series. I was working with an Apple rep in Asia, a country regional manager for Apple Asia. One of his reps took me to a school, where usually I do presentations to the teachers, showing them how to use QTVR technology. Well, we walk into this room and I’m expecting a bunch of teachers and we’ve got this second grade class, about 50 students! So, I’m standing there and the teacher says okay, you have them for an hour. The Apple rep remembers she has another appointment and she ducks out. The teacher has something to do and she leaves. So I learned a lot of interesting things trying to teach the class: The first is that the love of pizza and French fries is pretty universal. This was in Singapore, where the highs reach 90 degrees (this is a country where the president, when asked the greatest invention to mankind, replies air conditioning), so they loved my VR of snow. So I got a big kick out of “wow, is that SNOW”.

Another time I spoke in Asia and had to give a presentation at a Catholic school that was run by an Irish monk. After my presentation, he said, “lad, would you like to come back to my office and have some refreshments?” The big beer in Asia is Tiger beer. So I went back to his office, opened up the fridge and it’s like some TV commercial, every shelf was loaded with Tiger beer. So I had a few Tiger beers.

In the United States I’ve met a lot of great and intriguing people, actually wherever I go. I’d have to say that I’ve learned as much as I’ve taught. I would go to these areas and people would always have different questions and requests. It would get me started thinking about different uses and how we could make the technology apply to their project, so it was quite fascinating. Also, I gave a presentation to NASA in Houston where I got to see a lot of cool stuff and talk to people about their projects and how they envisioned VR…just a really cool thing in general.

I once got thrown in jail in France and the cells are co-ed. I’m only in the cell a few minutes and I’m playing that movie ‘Midnight Express’ in my mind as I’m trying to find someone who can speak English. Basically, I had hit a deer with a BMW I’d rented in Germany and it cost me $600 in fines. The official ticket said I’d hit a national resource, a protected animal on a marked highway. But really, I was an American driving a German sports car in France, so I was kinda asking for it, as far as they were concerned.

You told a good story in Sedona about your adventures in China, could you recount that here?

I was photographing up the Yangtze River, where they have the world’s largest hydroelectric project in the Valley of the Three Gorges. I was on a ship and a cable went taut, flipped and caught the back of my shoes and tossed me onto the deck below, causing me to smash my kneecap and elbow. Not a good experience. And you don’t want to experience social medicine in a poor country.

People came running over and eventually found me cause I was yelling, “Help! Help!” but not very loud. They had a ship’s doctor who was really just a medic who specialized in acupuncture. (Question: How many Chinese does it take to move a big American? Answer: About eight.) They had to take me two or three blocks to get me to the road. Now, in China they all pull together. There was no ambulance so they threw me on the back of a food truck, which took me to the emergency room – part of the police station. They had no gurneys so they had to drag me down the halls to take an x-ray, where they gave me a leaded apron but all the guys who brought me there were in the room and just as they were about to leave, “ZAP”, the x-ray goes off. I started to say, “Well, shouldn’t these guys leave the room” but “ZAP”, the x-ray goes off again. Maybe there are just too many Chinese so they’re not really worried about it. They’re looking at my x-rays and my assistant Vanessa comes in the room and says they’re not doing surgery; there are cockroaches in the room. Eventually they got hold of the American company that had hired me and they said just take care of whatever he needs, they would pay for it.

I was told they were going to take me to a teaching hospital in the area. They dragged me back down the halls and into an ambulance and to a hospital about an hour away. I thought it must be a good hospital because the ceilings were clean and the paint was fresh, couldn’t see anything more than that. The doctors came up with three different versions of what I could do: I could have surgery right away, they could put me in a cast and I could go home in three to five days. The third option was to put me in splints so I could get home. I voted for door number three.

Now this is about seven or eight hours after the accident and I’m all cramped up and can’t really move. And the Chinese are larger now than just a few years ago but their diet has changed. So this one doctor starts to move my arm to put in a splint and I was in such agonizing pain that I grabbed his belt and lifted him off the floor. In the meantime, my assistant Vanessa body-slams him against the wall and says, “you aren’t *** touching him until you give him something for the pain – opium or acupuncture”. So they asked me how much I weigh and I told them but I figure they must have assumed that pounds were the equivalent in kilograms, so they gave me way too much stuff and I’m flying high. So they set my arm and did my knee, but I can’t stay at this hospital because it’s only for Chinese nationals.

The other hospital is only a block or two away, and they didn’t want to spend the money on another ambulance, so they wheel me down the road. (Now, remember I’m stoned.) And I’m thinking like this is so cool. They get me to the next hospital and the doctor, who is English-trained and has a proper British accent, says, “What the hell is he doing here?” He looks at my x-rays and prescribes something for the pain and says we should talk in the morning. All the windows in the hospital are motorized, so they’re either all open on the floor or all closed, and they’re broken open. The doctors were giving a little tour that night so he gets some blankets for me. The cruise line has provided a steward who stays with me, on a futon on the floor. I haven’t really figured out what this guy is supposed to be there for but at this point, I don’t really care because now I’m crashing, the drugs have worn off, the pain is breaking through again and I’m sleeping on a wood slab with a half-inch of padding. I felt warm so I pulled the blankets away and the steward jumps up and covers me. I was trying to get the nurse to give me more medication and she’s basically saying, “Well you’re a big guy, tough it out”. So I got nothing, nothing for the pain, nothing to help me sleep, and a guy who only wanted to keep me covered. (When I moved to take the covers off, the wood would creak and wake up the steward). I finally got the covers off by taking my index fingers and slowly inching the covers down my body.

The other thing is that the steward would talk in his sleep. Of course, I don’t understand Chinese, but it must have been pretty good because there were a lot of inflections and volume. Finally, in the morning the doctor shows up. He still has some concerns about me leaving so I asked him how long it would take to put a cast on. He reminded me that this was China and that they didn’t have the same type of material as the west, so they use real plaster and it takes seven hours to set. I planned to leave in three hours, so that wasn’t an option. Then I found out what the steward was there for; in China, you all pull together, they don’t have cafeterias, your family has to cook for you and bring you meals. The steward was there to cook for me. I had told the doctor I wasn’t very hungry but he told me I needed to eat, as I’d be on the road for many hours. He talked to the steward and told me the steward was going to make me some pork stew, some bread and something to drink. The steward left and returned in an hour and brought a silver pail, some homogenized milk and some bread. But he was worried the stew would get cold so he burned it and it was scalding hot. He starts to spoon feed me and I’m burning my mouth, trying to tell him to stop but he doesn’t understand me. The stew was great; my mouth was crusted over from the burning. I ate some of the bread and drank some of the warm milk. A little while later, Vanessa shows up, bringing me a Coke and a candy bar; it was like manna from heaven to me. I wolfed that right down. Now the doctor and the crew from the ship show up and the ship wants to take me but the doc doesn’t want to release me. The guys say that they have a big Lexus and will take me to the airport in the Lexus. They unbolt my bed from the wall and wheel me down the halls on the bed, basically kidnapping me from the hospital because the doctor hasn’t released me. So we get to the airport, I get a wheelchair, they get me up to the jet way.

I’m now traveling first class; everything is fine. I’m in Wuhann. We fly from Wuhann to Shanghai. In Shanghai they don’t have jet ways, at least not at that time, so they had the big ramps. Two short guys show up. They don’t have a stretcher, they have a diaper with two metal rings on it, so they would carry me on both sides, but I don’t see that happening. In the meantime, I ask who’s paying for this, the stewardess is translating for us and she’s saying it’s way too expensive, we need to negotiate this. In Asia everything’s a negotiation. So they’re going back and forth, I don’t know what’s going on, Vanessa is trying to find out what’s going on. I finally ask, “What’s the number?” I did the calculations, the conversions: it’s $17; I think we can pay it.

Vanessa was trying to negotiate with the ticket agent, telling him we were supposed to be flying business and not pay for it, it’s all set. This goes on for 10 or 15 minutes. Vanessa loses her patience and uses some four-letter words in there, which seem to be universally understood. Finally they say they’ll upgrade me but not Vanessa, she says fine. I’m up in business and Vanessa is back in coach and I notice that out of 50 seats in business only two seats are taken, including mine. They won’t move Vanessa up to business until after dinner. They ask if I’d like to send my dessert back to Vanessa. I say, “Do you wanna get me shot? Do you know how insulting that is, to send my dessert back?” So, Vanessa is brought up after dinner and we arrive in Tokyo, where we have to go through the same thing again for the upgrade, now they want $700. So, I’m in business and Vanessa is back in coach again but now we have an all American flight crew. First thing they say is, “What the hell happened to you? What truck hit you?” They look at my ticket and find I’m assigned to the back row. They grab my ticket and Vanessa’s and move both of us up to the 2nd row in business. They asked us what happened so I told them the whole story to that point, and after I’d done that for one or two stewardesses, I had the whole flight crew come by, including the captain. I gave them the whole story and when we got back to Chicago as we’re getting ready to deplane, the captain and the purser gave me a bottle of champagne and a bottle of wine from first class to apologize for all the troubles we had with United and to help smooth over the experience. I thought that was pretty great of them.

Now I’m in the wheelchair at the airplane. In Chicago we have a lot of Eastern European immigrants. This kid is taking me down the corridors and as he tries to maneuver me he slams me into the wall. Fortunately, this time it wasn’t my bad leg. Vanessa asks facetiously if he has a driver’s license. This kid can barely speak English so he takes it seriously and says he hopes to takes his license soon. Great. We get through customs, get our luggage and my sister is there with one of those Medivac cars to take me to the hospital.

We give Vanessa some cash to have dinner with her boyfriend and make our way to the hospital. I used to freelance for a couple local magazines and I had done a story on this hospital and the very doctor who is going to examine me. He’s a former army surgeon, kinda like a Hawkeye from M.A.S.H. He’s the type of individual that hospitals hate when he talks but reporters love him because he’s so colorful. He says things like, “You know, people die in the hospital”, which really sets off bells and whistles with the PR people but reporters just love it.

I’m in the room and ask if I can have some help to go to the bathroom. The doctor comes in and recognizes me and says, “You’ve either been to Vietnam or China”. I say, “How can you tell? I’ve been to China”. He says because I have Vietnam-era army medical dressings that had been confiscated when the Americans moved out; they must have shared them with China. He cuts away at the bandages and wire mesh and as he starts to cut away, a bug comes out from underneath the mesh. The doctor steps back and tells his assistants to cut everything away and burn it, including my clothes. They cut away all my clothing and put it in some special chute that goes to an incinerator. I give him the postage-stamp size x-ray they took in China. I get x-rays done again and this time they’re big beautiful 16 x 20s. The doctor looks at them and says, “Yep, smashed in your tibia and you’ll need to have your elbow pinned back together. Okay, come back tomorrow”. I said “Whaddya mean come back tomorrow? I just spent all this time getting here from China and now you’re sending me home saying I need surgery.” He says, “Yeah, but its Sunday and there’s no surgeon on staff for this type of surgery, you’ll need to go see them, so would you rather spend the time in the hospital or go home for the day?”

Okay, point taken. My family gets me back home and the following day I come back to the hospital to see a sports medicine surgeon. I have the procedure done the next day, and have had a couple more since then. That’s pretty much the China story.

What’s happening with your QT-Bug tour, which I believe was due to end this past February?

It’s actually still going on. It’s not happening as fast as I would like, in terms of not being able to fill all the requests. It’s more a funding issue. I couldn’t get all the funds I needed for the project to happen within a year but I could find sponsors who would commit to a couple years of sponsorships, and we’ve going for some grants, so we’ll fund the project that way. I’ve got some really good sponsors – VRToolbox is a major sponsor and have been great, iPix, Bogen, Kaidan, and a couple other non-VR companies.

The car has actually been evolving. The interior had been redone. I hope to go to Europe with the car next year. I found out I could ship it there for $700 if I had the time, basically the car would sit until when there’s an open container then they’d just throw it in there. I’m looking to do that in the next year.

What happens with all the VRs after the tour is finished?

After we’re done with the tour, the images will go on a traveling road show with a museum. I’ve talked to a couple museums about donating the car, so its still moving forward. If anyone would like to be involved or sponsor the car, we’re always interested. The basic concept is that I’m traveling around the U.S. and possibly Europe and creating QuickTime content as I go. As the tour happens I’m also teaching, so I’m speaking at colleges and universities about QuickTime and photography. Now I’m talking about American history with the Smithsonian, people are really interested in the aircraft and that kind of thing. So I’m going to keep it going for a little while longer.

One of my biggest supporters on the tour is Rhonda Stratten, who works at Apple on QuickTime. She’s always been helpful, not always in monetary ways, but in support and information. So I wanted them to know that I was out there, helping to promote QTVR. But I made a mistake: I talked at this one Mac user group and afterwards, the president of the group thought I was outstanding and asked what they could do to help me. I said that my rule on speaking at places is that you feed me and fill my tank with gas, and I’ve never had a problem with that. He wanted to do something more, so I gave him Rhonda’s email address and said just tell her that I do a great job, etc. Well, he turned around and shared Rhonda’s email address with the entire membership, a couple hundred people. Poor Rhonda was bombarded with all these emails. So now I’m careful.

Can you update us on the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum project? Did you obtain the additional funding you were seeking to complete the project?

The project is still moving forward; it goes in spurts. Last year we did some shooting while they figured out how they were going to deliver some of the content. They set up kiosks with the VRs and that really turned the corner for us. Once people could use the kiosks and the museum saw how well it was received that really opened up the funding for us. Funding at a museum is always difficult, so I work on the project as they have the funds and the artifacts. It’s not the hectic pace it used to be in terms of a continuous project, but it is a continuous thing in far as I’ll come out for a month and shoot a group of artifacts and then come back to Chicago to work on it for a couple weeks while they’re restoring some more aircraft. I would say that this year I’m spending about a third of my time in D.C. working on the project.

Lots of stuff going on with the content and it’s pretty cool. I’ll be shooting SpaceShipOne, which won the $10 million Ansari X Prize and has been donated to the museum. I’m excited about getting a part of a current history artifact. Right now I’m doing WWI artifacts, early fighter aircraft – pretty cool how advanced they were and how backwards they were, all at the same time. The project will continue on for a couple years and museums are always looking for funding, so hopefully more and more people will get involved. The museum would like to have everything photographed and I’m pushing to have the large artifacts like the Spirit of St. Louis and X15 and we’re doing feasibility studies on how we would shoot that.

Your website states that you are “certified as an expert in digital imaging by the U.S. government”; what’s that all about?

That actually goes back quite a ways. It was my first big VR project. I was working for the EPA and they had a research ship, which would go out and take core and water samples to check for pollution. They wanted to create a virtual tour for the scientist and research specialists who would come on board for a short time, usually two or three weeks, and it would take a long time to orient them so they lost a lot of time just getting these people oriented. So the VR tour would orient them before they got there. An interactive tour was put together with general info for the researchers who were going to come on board the ship.

When the EPA contacted me and my price was accepted, they had scheduled the ship during a lull to take me out for about a week. I’d do the photography and then the ship would come back in, pick up supplies and researchers and then head back out. So it wasn’t a cheap thing to schedule the ship to come on in. I had to fly to where the ship was, they took care of all the arrangements, and I thought everything was fine. About 10 days before I was scheduled to fly out to this research vessel I got a phone call from the person who was handling the project, who was concerned because my quote was higher than what they were allowed to give out. At the price I was at they’d have to put me out to bid. I asked what the bid price was, where they wouldn’t have to do that, but it was way lower than what I had quoted and I wasn’t going to lower my price that far to do this project. He told me if I were an expert in the field they weren’t required to put me out to bid. He asked if I had some people he could talk to, at least five names. I gave him some contacts – at Apple, another client, a camera manufacturer, etc. Five days go by and I’m getting concerned, should I take my flight to meet the ship that was coming to pick me up. And it cost more for the ship to come and pick me up than the difference in the price so I didn’t understand what the problem was. Finally I get a phone call and the guy says the U.S government has certified me as an expert in digital imaging. So I basically became an expert in a field certified by the government because they needed me to go do this shoot that would cost them more to put out to bid than make me an expert.

What are your thoughts on the current VR industry and community?

I think things like the World Wide Panorama series, and Aldo’s SPi-V Engine are great and help to promote the technology and to promote us as content creators. And VRMag helps to focus people on what’s going on and how to use the content.

I think sometimes people pigeonhole themselves. I don’t think see myself as a photographer anymore; I’m in digital images. I create still and virtual. We’re so much more than we used to be and the industry is always growing and there’s so many different ways we can use the technology. I think that people get themselves pigeonholed because the focus on one aspect, they look only at one thing about the technology. Now that’s great and you can do that and be successful with it, but usually I find that the more successful people have that thirst for knowledge, they’re always looking for that new avenue or technique or procedure. One of the reasons I do the QTVR series and the Summit is because I think the knowledge that you gain from it is very important. Some people get threatened by sharing knowledge but I seem to excel from it: the more I give out the more I learn. So when a person focuses on a specific thing I think they miss part of how they can improve themselves and the industry. As people become more aware there are more uses for the technology, chances of getting work and good projects increase.

I’ve seen museum work increase simply because of what the Smithsonian is doing. The project there has been seen by other museums and they want to do something similar using the technology. I’m also seeing places wanting to do something with handheld devices and VR, so there’s growth potential there. Unfortunately since it’s still a cottage industry we still have to promote ourselves. It’s not like people come walking into your shop asking you to do this work. We still have to do a certain amount of education and promotion. QuickTime has become so accepted because of iTunes that I rarely have to sell QuickTime any longer. People have heard of it and know what it can do. Alternative technologies are growing, in terms of playback with Java and Flash, where we’ve seen improvements, like SPi-V. All that helps to expand the clientele that I can call on.

I find some people don’t want to share knowledge. I get asked why I give away so much information. I never worry about competition. I like to tell people there’s nobody better than me out there so what do I need to worry about. It’s kind of an attitude thing. It’s a way of looking at what you do and what your worth is. I say that and some people get pissed off and upset when they first hear me say that (that I consider myself the best and there’s nothing else to worry about). But the attitude drives me forward. Everyone is the best; everyone does something different. When you’re out there and shooting, I don’t find the technology to be the driving force all the time. It’s my creativity. The way I look at a picture is different than how anyone else would do it. The way we see what’s important in an image is still unique to ourselves. So when someone calls up and wants to hire me, they’re hiring not only my reputation but also my style.

Right now I’m in the midst of a large hotel project and I have several photographers working for me on this project and I’m redoing a lot of the images so there’s a certain uniqueness to the entire package and a consistency between all the photographers and myself, even though we all see things differently. And that’s one of the things the client likes about it, that I put that effort in to have that touch, let’s say. I’ve never been scared of a large project, sometimes to my detriment. I have no fears about going out and trying to make something happen, so lots of times I work on a large project like the Smithsonian and I actually have to go in and sell them on it, even though they wanted to do it, they didn’t know exactly what they wanted and how to have it done, so I had to go through a long, arduous process to make it happen, so part of that is my attitude and my drive.

Any advice for those just starting out in the VR industry?

Being the best I want to do the best and I want to have the best work. I think for people just starting out you need to think about how to improve your craft. I would also like to see standards – and I don’t mean standards like file size and technology and stuff like that – I mean standards as far as striving towards a certain level of competency and quality in your work. I think that has always helped me along. I’ve been associated with a lot of photo organizations and would always compete in contests. It was a how I could tell if I was any good or not, against my peers. If I won first place it told me I was doing a good job, and if I didn’t it told me I needed to improve, or that I was shooting stuff that just wasn’t going to pay me very well. So it did give me guidance and a standard with which to work with.

What equipment do you use?

Gear for VR:
Canon 1Ds Mark 2
Nikon Coolpix with fisheye

Lens:
8mm Sigma Fisheye
Canon 15mm Fisheye
Sigma 12 to 24mm zoom
Canon 24mm f2.8

Computers:
Apple 1.5 PowerBook with 1 gig ram
Apple Duel G5 2.5 PowerMac 2.5 gigs ram, 375GB hard drive

Software:
Interactive Studio 1.4 from Ipix with RealViz Plugin
RealViz Stitcher 4.0
The VR Worx 2.5. from Vrtoolbox
Cubic Converter from Click Here Design
Cubic Connector from CHD
PhotoShop CS

VR Heads:
Kaidan QuickPan
Lewis Knapp Motorized VR head
Manfoto VR head
Gizo tripod

Read more about the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum QTVR Project.

Email: dbiela[at]mac[dot]com