Hi everyone,
Today, I have hosted the Knowledge Sharing Virtual Meetup on 360 Photography and Virtual Tours. As photography is my passion and I discovered it after becoming as a Local Guide. I love taking 360 Photos and I got to know about 360 Photos only when I got Ricoh Theta V 360 camera as a gift from Local Guides Team for all the attendees of Connect Live 2018 including me. Then I started learning about 360 Photos, Virtual Tours, Google Street View, etc.
Caption- 360 Camera on left side and Laptop and iPad on the right side showing the Google Meet screen during Meetup.
I hosted this Meetup in order to share my knowledge about 360 Photography, Virtual Tour Creation, Tools to use, Post editing, etc with the Attendees.
I decided to keep this Meetup for two hours since I know I had to cover many things during the Meetup. I also decided that in addition to the presentation where I will explain about 360 Photography and Virtual Tours, etc. I will show them by practically doing it on sharing the screen so that they will get clear idea on the things we discuss during the Meetup.
To do this, I decided to use three devices my laptop to present screen for giving powerpoint presentation I created, my mobile to present my screen while practically doing it, my iPad to turn on video and audio for attendees to see and listen me. This you can see in the top photo where laptop at centre and iPad on the right side. This method worked very well and it helped me jump through presentation in laptop, to practical example in mobile, iPad for video and audio purpose.
Let me tell you what are the things I planned to explain during the Meetup.
- What is 360 Photo?
- What is Virtual Tour?
- How to take 360 Photos in Mobile and 360 Camera?
- How 360 Photos can be taken with DSLR?
- Tools required to take 360 Photos in different devices.
- Post editing process for hiding the nadir(base area) when using 360 Camera or DSLR.
- Publishing 360 Photos to Google Street View.
- Creating Virtual Tours for a business place.
- Overview about Google Street View Trusted.
- How to become Street View Trusted Photographer?
- Tips on taking 360 Photos.
I planned on explaining Process of creating blue lines using Ricoh Theta V in Google Street View but the two hours time was about to end and I couldn’t explain it. I practically took 360 photos using Mobile but couldn’t practically take 360 photo using 360 camera during the session as I thought to cover other important things and also it’s easy to take using 360 camera and I explained during presentation.
Luckily I was able to give an overview on how we can use other premium software(I think which internally use Google’s API) to create virtual tours on creating different floors if required and connecting multiple 360 photos for large places and publish it to Street View and avoid errors if it happen and in this mentioned way, we are creating it in pc.
As you can see, there were lot of things I needed to cover in this Meetup and also to show practically, I had to be ready with my presentation and everything.
The Meetup started at today(1st May 2021) at 3PM IST and attendees started joining. I asked them for a moment as I was setting up my devices and in few moments, I introduced myself and told How I started my journey as a Local Guide and how I got to know to about Google Street View and my passion for photography. Three of the attendees at the start of the event introduced themselves. After that, I started my presentation from my laptop on sharing the screen and during which other attendees started joining but I continued the session as I had lot to cover during the Meetup. I gone through each slide while presenting and explained briefly only from the presentation as I informed that I will practically show once the presentation is over.
It made me happy to see the attendees listening to my presentation as I cover each topic during the Meetup.
I am not sure about the timing but I think it took some around 30 mins for me to cover the topic only from the presentation.
Once after that, I stopped sharing screen from my laptop and started sharing screen from my mobile and opened Google Street View App and took a 360 Photo of my room(but I didn’t publish it as I just want to show attendees on how to take 360 Photos using Mobile) There were some stitching errors in the 360 photo I took and I told them as I usually use my 360 camera to take 360 photos which is very easy, the 360 photo I took using Mobile require some practice and we can take good 360 photos using Mobile itself on patiently giving time for each shots as it requires 20+ shots for creating 360 photo using Mobile.
To continue the process, what I did was that I had multiple 360 photos of one of the mosques in my native which I didn’t published in Street View.
I showed them on my post processing using Google Snapseed Application to hide the nadir(base area) using healing option and exporting it. Then importing those 360 photos to Google Street View, adding Maps listing of that place and publishing it.
I showed how those 360 photos appeared right away in Google Maps. Then I tried creating Virtual Tours on connecting those two 360 photos but it seemed that the one of those two 360 photos was not showing up when connecting it which sometime may happen and I told them we can delete and re-upload both and by trying sometime later may work.
To show on how to create virtual tours, I edited the virtual tour of another place which I already published. I showed on how to connect multiple 360 photos and I jumped to the older version option while creating virtual tours as Move and Connect photos option is available on clicking options on upper right corner after selecting 360 photos.
I shared some of the points to consider while taking 360 Photos and also some tips on taking 360 Photos.
After that I stopped presenting from my mobile and presented the screen from my laptop to share with the attendees on the important post about How to be a Street View trusted photographer while also being a Local Guide and shared with them how I keep my service as Google Street View Trusted Photographer seperately and my contribution to Google Maps as separate. Reviewing a place and giving a rating of a place is my point of view about the place and it’s my contribution to Google Maps and how I keep it seperately.
Then I got few things in mind to quickly share with the Attendees such as how using the HDR mode while taking 360 Photos helps improve the quality of the 360 photo and I showed a photo examples of two 360 photos which are taken in different modes of a same place.
I gave an overview on one of the virtual tours which I created using a premium software recently of a large places in my laptop and showed on editing the existing connections and told how we can publish it directly to Street View from the software.
I think the practical session and to come till the above discussion took around 1 hour and 15 minutes as the time I noticed it was having some 10 minutes for our planned end time.
Then as the Meetup planned end time was around, we ended the Meetup and I had the satisfaction of sharing the things about 360 Photography and Virtual Tours with my fellow local guide friends.
I am a beginner in Virtual Meetup and since I had to cover lot of topics, I continued the Meetup without a gap and I am very much thankful to the Attendees for politely listening to me throughout the Meetup and after starting the session, I didn’t have the introduction of the attendees but I hope this Meetup was beneficial for the attendees.
I really couldn’t explain how much grateful I am to each and everyone who attended the Meetup for listening to me explaining topics during the Meetup.
Some of the attendees I got the names from the Meetup Chat History and are mentioned below.
@KashifMisidia bhai
@Anil6969 bhai
@MAHBUB_HYDER bhai
and others who joined the Meetup.
I thank all the other attendees who came to the Meetup for sometime and please let me know in comments if you have attended it.
I hope you like this Meetup Recap. Take care everyone. Stay safe and Peace.
