HANS NYBERG: VIRTUAL EVANGELIST
Hans Nyberg, the man behind the fullscreen panoramas at panoramas.dk, discusses his life and interest in photography.
by Michelle Bienias
Hans Nyberg is well known within the VR community, particularly for his latest project – showcasing a full-screen VR each week from world-wide submissions at his web site, www.panoramas.dk. Hans also runs three other web sites, QTVR.dk,Virtual Denmark, and VR Aarhus, in addition to his commercial photography site. Hans was born and raised in Sweden but has lived in Denmark for over 30 years. He is a self-taught with over 30 years experience as a professional photographer.
 How and when did you first get interested in photography?
 I got my first camera when I was 13. I was very fortunate that my drawing master at school understood my interest and he actually sent me out with my camera instead of trying to teach me to draw. I am probably the first pupil in Sweden who got an award in drawing by using a camera! In addition, three of my other teachers were active amateur photographers and members of the local photo club. I soon became very active in the club and got several awards from local and national photo competitions. At 17 I won a national competition for young people. I worked as an assistant clerk for two years then I did my military service.
In 1960 I won a Bronze plaque in the Swedish Master competition, arranged by the magazine FOTO. I was experimenting a lot at that time with very hard copies, like almost all photographers at that time. Otto Steinert in Saarbrukken was a great hero for many young photographers and many of the things done at that school were experimental subjective photography.
My military service resulted in a lot of images and a collection of them won another bronze plaque in the master competition of 1961.
The Photo club at Ludvika was at that time one of Sweden’s most successful in the "Club War", a competition between the Swedish photo clubs. I got a second place individually in 1963. Actually, two of my pals from the club became very successful photographers. One of them, Janus Jurka, is a well-known nature photographer in Sweden and the other, Per Wiklund, became a very successful fashion photographer.
The UN needed soldiers in Gaza and I went there immediately after my military service in Sweden. I was in Gaza, Sharm el Sheik and Rafah for two years, 1963-1964. At that time everything was very calm in Gaza and no serious incidents at all happened during the two years. We had plenty of time to go on leave to Egypt, Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus.
It sounds like you had lots of time to explore the surrounding area. Are there any special locations from your early years abroad where you would like to return to shoot panoramas?
The St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai would be one place. It is made for a cubic, with the high mountains around it, and the view from the top of Mount Sinai is fantastic. The library there has the largest collection of illuminated manuscripts after the Vatican. I t has been nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage site recently.
We have a large number of old churches in Denmark, most of them are from the 12th and 13th centuries, and I would love to documents these in cubic qtvr.
Was it after your military service and your two years with the U.N. that you decided to become a professional photographer?
When I came home from Gaza I bought an old car and traveled around Europe for half a year. I met a Danish girl in Paris, which was the reason I later came to Denmark. When I came home to Sweden I had to decide if I was to become a professional photographer. I got a job as assistant to Björn Breitholtz in Gothenburg, a well-known advertising and fashion photographer. I stayed with him for two years, during which I sold my first images to some magazines. I also got some images shown at Young Photographers 66, an exhibition at the Modern Museum in Stockholm. Actually the one and only juror was Otto Steinert. In 1967 I moved to Denmark where I got a job as photographer at Scan-Ad in Aarhus, an advertising agency that at the time was the third largest in Denmark. I had very little experience and had to learn on the job.
Are there any particular jobs from this time period that stand out in your mind?
In 1974, we made an ad for Biotex (a popular washing powder in Denmark) that didn’t use professional models but real people, something that had not been done in Denmark at that time. I used several people from my village, including the local locksmith.
In 1978, after 10 years at Scan-Ad, I decided to start on my own. I had already built a house that had a suitable studio. It took me a year to get the customers I needed to live from it. One of them was the large department store Salling. I had worked with catalogs for them and several other large shopping centers at Scan-Ad. I went on to do their Christmas catalogs for ten years. I stopped doing catalogs in 1990. The Christmas catalogs were done in summer and I was occupied the best time of the year. For a couple of years I only did small jobs for some of my other customers. However, in 1994 I got divorced, which forced me to try to get more work. This was not as easy as it was in 1978. The number of photographers had increased and the prices had gone down. Digital imaging was just starting and I was sure that this would change photography completely. I bought one of the first PowerMacs and started to experiment with image manipulation. The image of the chest with drawers cut out of the tree was made in 1997. The tree was an image I bought from one of my friends, Ole Laasby, who specializes in Denmark Pictures. The rest was made in the studio and manipulated.
One of my latest is actually a pano of the amphitheater at Aarhus University, made from two fisheyes and sold to a British book publisher. The angle is 120x120 degree, an impossible thing to do with a rectilinear lens, and it is converted to rectilinear from a spheric stitch. I had it scanned at the highest resolution, 6300 ppi on Imagon and the quality is fantastic. The original is a 400 asa negative Fuji and the lens is my "cheap" fisheye from Pentax. The spheric is 213 MB but it seems to be too big to convert to rectilinear with Panotools. I had to take it down to 116 MB first. The final size I needed is only 31 MB but I thought it could be fun to have one that could be printed in 3x3 meters.
One of my tougher requests was for an aerial view of a digital printer. The problem was that there was only 3 meters to the ceiling. I made a special tripod and moved it along the printer, taking more than 30 images.
How did you become involved with VR technologies and what was the first project you did using VR?
As a photographer I have always been interested in new techniques. I first got on the Internet in 1996 but what I saw the first few years didn’t impress me very much. However, in the spring of 1999 I had seen some of Andrew Nemeth´s panoramas and that was the first time I had seen panoramas being used in a creative way. Another panorama I found at the same time was a (select lake Lugano Virtual Tour) QTVR from Ticino made by WebIdentity. I still have my old bookmarks with the link - the view from a restaurant over the mountains was fantastic. I was eager to start making panos and as I also had found the VR Seattle web site I decided that I should make a VR Aarhus. And I wanted lots of people in my panoramas. No empty streets. I also wanted to do spherical panoramas so I bought a Full Frame fish eye for my Pentax. A little later I saw some QTVR at the Harrods website that displayed in a size about 600 x 800 pixels, by Douglas Cape in London. Those panos were what inspired me to begin some experiments with full screen panoramas. However, I was busy with other work during 2000 so it wasn’t until 2001 that I got the site ready to go online.
From a professional perspective, how frequently are you able to employ VR photography in your commercial assignments? What are some of the criteria that make an assignment or client more favorably disposed to using panoramas?
I have only used QTVR for one of my clients until now. I actually have not made any direct promotion for it. Until very recently, I’ve never had any requests for it. It has been used very little here in Denmark and I believe it is necessary with a very direct way of promotion; however, I believe the time is now. In the last 3 weeks I have had 3 requests for prices on QTVR. Panoramic images are another thing. I have used it for several assignments and I believe I will use it much more. I made the image from the Tropical Zoo, Randers Regnskov in 2000 and have done several similar ones recently. I also made it as a spherical pano, my second. The first was from the Concert Hall in Aarhus in 1999. I used the viewer from Live Picture to see them. When Quicktime 5 came along in the spring of 2001, I converted them to cubics
Your popular Worldwide VR Panoramas website has links to over 19,000 panoramas. What drove you to initiate this project?
I missed having a place where you could find links to VR panoramas that were geographically ordered and linked directly to the panoramas. I had already collected a large amount for my link site in VR Aarhus and I thought it could be a good idea to make it a special site.
This past year you started featuring a full-screen VR each week, contributed from photographers all over the world. What has been the reaction to this within the VR community?
I have only had positive reactions. Most of the panoramas I have presented until now have been some I have found myself and none of the photographers I have asked have been negative to the idea. Actually, they been very positive and many of them also provide me with all the information and links I can use. Even if I sometimes like to write the small stories about the place/panorama myself, I am very grateful for all the help I can get. Right now I have to decide what to do for the next year. To be able to continue I need a sponsor for the web site, at least to cover the hosting expenses. Also, what should I do with the panoramas from 2002? I have asked a couple of the photographers how they feel about making it a sort of full screen WRINKLE 2002. The response has been positive but I would have to contact all and also collect those movies that I do not have on my server.
In your Danish Cubics web site you’ve made the panoramic images almost as important as the QTVR. What is your opinion about the difference in expression?
I am becoming more and more aware of the expressiveness of the panoramic image. Whether it is a full 360-degree or a partial panorama sometimes the image gives you a very surprising view. To be able to see both to the south and north at the same time can be very confusing, but it is this confusion that gives the image its own language, which is very different from a movie.
The panorama I like best at the moment is the Top of Denmark-Grenen. In that image the eye is led naturally from the south to the north view and that gives it a very strong appeal. The QTVR movie has a completely different expression.
I noticed that you handhold many of your panoramas. What techniques(s) do you use to ensure the photos line up properly?
I started doing handheld panos at the Aarhus Festival last year. I hate carrying lots of equipment (have done it for 35 years) and using a tripod in the middle of a crowd at the festival is not possible. It is all a matter of thinking differently. The nodal point, which everyone knows as the most important thing when doing panoramas, is only important for close subjects. With a full frame fisheye you have a very large view, and it isn’t difficult to focus on the closest subjects and get the areas where you blend the images at the sides. You also learn how to circulate around the camera and the top of your feet! Of course, I do my stitching by hand in Photoshop – using a software program wouldn’t work very well.
I also use a technique were I hold my arm up and turn the camera around with my wrist (I really need the extra height, I am 163 cm). With my new Canon D60 and the Sigma 8 mm fisheye, I can do a pano with four images. You can easily take the three images just turning your hand; you only need to move your body for the last image. Take a look at the ‘Hands Up at the Festival’ pano that I stitched specially for this interview. It was made this year at the Aarhus Festival and it was the first photo session where I used a combination of the Canon D60 and the Sigma 8 mm.
Of course, there are a lot of occasions where you have to use a tripod, especially with indoor cubics with details in the peripheral areas, up and down (perhaps I can still get Kaidan as a sponsor).
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