2022
Bit of my 360 background story
My focus on 360 photography came about a year ago. From then on I began to research and learn about it. I have heard from my friend @Rumal95 about Sri Lanka's first Blue line meetup organized by @AnuradhaP . Since then, my interest in 360 photography and street view has grown steadily.
I discussed this regularly with my local guide partner @ravindus. After looking at many things, we bought an Xiaomi Mi Sphere camera. But with the desire to contribute to street view, we decided to buy our second camera, the Insta 360 one X. The decision to choose the Insta 360 camera was taken after considering the price, quality, its dynamic range and ease of workflow to SV contribution. After doing some preliminary experiments, we started contributing to Street View.
I hosted my First Blue Line meetup
@ravindus organized our first Blue line meetup on January 26th. There we were able to successfully add the blue-line to the newly opened section of the Southern Expressway between Kadawatha, Kerawalapitiya.
After that I noticed that there was no street view in the section on the Kurunegala - Trincomalee A6 road from Habarana to Galoya. So I organized the Habarana - Galoya blue-line meetup to complete that section.
Due to the limited seating inside car, the number of participants was limited to four. @ravindus , @Chthuwa and Suranga joined me for this meetup. On the morning of February 21st, we left for the meetup from our home.
We had lunch in the Dambulla area and reached Habarana around 2 pm.
This 360 recording experience was new to Suranga and Chathuranga. First we gave them an introduction on street view and 360 photography. After setting up the 360 camera, we started recording 360 along the road.
It was an amazing experience drive through green paddy fields and nature. We were little bit worried about encountering wild elephants on the way driving through the forest, but never had such experience.
Recordings were made from Habarana to Galoya on the A6 road and then to Minneriya on the B617 route. It took us about an hour to cover that 40km, and we had about 25 gigabytes of data recorded in the memory card.
At the end we took a dip in the stream from the Thambalawewa reservoir. @ravindus and I uploaded the recorded data to google map. That way, our second blue-line was successfully completed.
Here is the link to shared album of the meetup.
Enjoy the recap video of the meetup.
@IlankovanT @InaS @KatyaL @PaulPavlinovich @love_ikoma_toyo @Aruni hope you would enjoy this RECAP. Please tag anyone who would love to read this recap.
@AnuradhaP Thanks for the comment. Yes we need to get our selves together soon in a meetup maybe another blue line one.
@PaulPavlinovich Thank you for your compliments.
Just two days after the meetup, I heard news that wild elephant had broken into the Galoya village. In the dry season wild elephants come out of the jungle frequently for food and water.
@PaulPavlinovich We have that kind of incidents happen in some areas in our country. Not only they damage to property and crops but also sometimes attack to people. This conflict between elephants and people has been there for a while. Authorities are taking steps by making electric fences to control but still happening.
P.S. those beautiful intelligent animals not aggressive normally.
