Remember the Alamo!
When not shooting events, I lead a secret life as a Panoramic, aka "virtual reality (VR)" photographer. During the final two weeks of the Alamo Drafthouse' ten year run at 409 Colorado, the theatre's staff were kind enough not to pummel me with the various unwieldy tripods I kept dragging around during work hours. As a result of their mercy, you'll be able to enjoy a virtual visit to our favorite movie digs years after the new night club's 15 minutes are up.

TIP: You can eliminate loading times between movies by downloading the entire thing to your computer before you view it. Download the entire Virtual Alamo (343 MB). Whichever way you view it, a fast Internet connection will help. You must have free QuickTime software properly installed, or an equivalent QTVR compatible viewer. For best viewing experience, I strongly recommend that you read the additional notes below. To visit online immediately without the full download, click the photo below.

June 26, 2007

Princess Bride Quote-along

Random Notes:

• The images are spherical QTVR. You can look at the floor, ceiling, and everything else. Don't forget to zoom in and out.
• If you want to go somewhere, try clicking on a door or window, or just a different part of the room. Your browser will give you clues.
• If you have downloaded the movies to your computer, and then open them from there, they should automatically set to full screen, which is much better. To get out of full screen, press the Escape (esc) key on your keyboard.
• There are a few 'bonus' alternative views. My overly obvious clues: When you walk behind the bar, be sure to try the house Amber. In the projection room, don't forget to turn on projector number 1. When you get to the front of the theatre, don't stop at the screen.
• They're 10 to 14 megabytes each. It's normal if it takes a little time for each to load. For this type of work, these are 'medium' sized images. A super hi-res rendition is a future possibility. But not this week.
• Please enjoy the work for your own non-commercial purposes, but don't abuse--it's copyrighted. Please link to this page, but don't redistribute. Please do ask if you need images from this project for something--I will try to help out other Alamo fans as appropriate.
• Each view is an individual QuickTime movie. If you know how to save them to your hard drive, be sure to keep them all in the same folder, so that the links between movies will work.
• HIGHLY recommended: For the ultimate viewing experience, use a VR browser that allows full screen OpenGL accelerated viewing. On the Mac, Cubic Navigator is one such program, and by far the coolest ten dollar program that I know. On the PC... Well, I don't use Windoze myself, so I wouldn't know, but I'm sure you can find one if you look.
• Each movie consists of 8 to 10 photos taken using a special tripod which is obviously invisible (and only sometimes casts a shadow), which are then combined by magic, and five different software applications. And that's about as technical as I have time to get right this minute.
• I will give a prize to the first person who tells me the correct total number of views (movies) in the project. Those of you I already told are disqualified. D'oh! The prize will inevitably be a print of a photo taken at the Alamo sometime over the last two weeks.
• Finally, THANKS to Tim and Karrie League and the Alamo staff for allowing me to do this documentary project, and for an awesome first decade!

June 27, 2007