Photosynth

In a few days my father will celebrate his 70th birthday.  His actual birthday is April 15th, but I recently had the opportunity to share in a surprise birthday party for him that my mother worked hard to organize and keep secret.   The Saturday evening party was a huge success and a little over 100 people showed up to surprise my father and wish him well.  The moment my father realized what was going on and saw me his eyes lit up.  It was a moment I will never forget.  

My parents live outside Columbia, South Carolina and attend church every Sunday.  My father is  the pastor there and whenever I am in Columbia, I attend with my family.  The congregation is always happy to see me when I'm home but this year I was put on the spot.  Toward the end of service I was asked to stand and in front of everyone was asked if I could take a photograph of everyone in attendance.  Since I was a kid I often have a camera with me, and this day was no different.  I had no choice but to say yes, but I love a challenge anyway.  With no time to prepare or think about how I wanted to photograph everyone I had to come up with an idea in the blink of an eye.  I asked everyone to meet me outside.  It was an overcast day so I was hoping it would stay that way for the sake of my photo's.  Service was over around 12:30 and that is usually the worst time to shoot an image outside but luck was on my side.  Once everyone was outside I started putting the group together which comprised of infants, teens, adults and senior citizens.  I didn't want to just take a photograph and then it hit me.  Photosynth!

Recently while at a meeting at Microsoft we discussed photosynth.  If you are not familiar with Photosynth, simply go to www.Photosynth.net.  The world was introduced to photosynth during the 44th inauguration of President Barack Obama.  During the inauguration CNN asked those in attendance to submit their photo's and the images were used to make one huge photosynth that allows the viewer to move around and zoom in an out anywhere in the image.  The technology is really quite amazing.  While at Microsoft I learned how to make a synth and decided this was the perfect opportunity to make one.  I organized my group and started by shooting the entire group.  My camera was the  Sony A900 with a Carl Zeiss 24-70 lens.  The light was perfect and I thanked God for an overcast day.  I started by shooting the entire group and then I walked in close and started shooting sections of the group.  I focused on the kids, and then the older subjects.  I photographed the group in different sections and walked around as I shot while giving the group direction and having them say OBAMA as I photographed them.  Then only drawback to my shoot was that I only had one card and ran out of space while shooting but still I got enough images to make a photosynth.  Please follow the link and let me know your thoughts.  Imagine what you can do if you had a little time to really think about what you wanted to do.  

The photosynth can be viewed on a Mac, but you can only make a synth from a PC.  First download the software and then go out and shoot.  Please keep in mind that all images are public and can only be viewed from www.Photosynth.net.   Have fun!

Always Dream Big,

Matthew Jordan Smith