Vito Paratore Photography

This past Saturday, I was finally able to carve out a block of time to photograph. I woke up early to drive there for sunrise, but the clouds were too thick to see the sun coming up. I was surprisingly okay with that, since lately I have wanted to take some abstract macros. I found a nice little oak (?) tree covered in water droplets and began to shoot it. While repositioning to try a new angle, I looked back into my viewfinder and found the composition below. I was not even shooting the grasses there, so I’m considering this shot a gift from God (Well, all my shots are…but this one in particular). In the uninspired photographic “slump” I have been in the past few weeks, I needed a little Divine intervention.

After deciding the clouds moving in were going to ruin the sunset, I started to drive home. What a misjudgment! About 5 miles down the road, I looked back to find great color and very dramatic light. I found a spot to turn around and went back. I missed the most dramatic light because of my impatience, but the sunset was still quite beautiful when I got back to take photos. I learned a key lesson of photography that day: Never leave before the sun is down!

After a few uninspired, busy weeks, I made time to go shooting this past Friday and Saturday. On Friday, I took a trip to scout out Batsto Lake not too far from Tuckerton, New Jersey. It looks like it has some promise, although bug spray is a must. I found 3 ticks on me after walking for less than 15 minutes. I went back to Whitesbog for sunset and found a few good spots for future photos.

On Saturday I went back to Whitesbog for sunset. I found this small group of stumps in one of the bogs. Because the bog is so shallow, the water is very still, making for awesome reflections of the sky. Here is what I ended up with:

A few weeks ago, in thinking about pursuing real estate photography, I realized I would need a flexible portfolio to show off my work to potential clients. After talking to some friends and family and doing some research of my own, I figured a Mac would fit my needs well. I found a previous generation 2.2ghz Core 2 Duo White Macbook for ~30% off the original price on the refurbished page of the Apple.com store. I ordered it the Wednesday before easter and received it in the mail the next Wednesday. It took literally 5 minutes (or so) to set up my user account and network connections. This is my first Mac, so the operating system is all new to me, but I found it simple and easy to use. Overall, the Macbook is excellent. Fast, easy to use, and simple, elegant design. Of course, surfing the web and instant messaging on the couch again is great.

Here is another virtual tour from this house, featuring the large master bathroom. This one is a single exposure, but I took a second exposure that I could use to gain some more light inside the master bedroom.

Click on image to view virtual tour.

After the conservatory, I moved my setup into the kitchen to take a virtual tour in there. In the photo in the last entry, you can see the kitchen area underneath the arches in the left-hand side. To properly expose the inside of the house, I had to increase the exposure enough to wash out the conservatory. To combat this, I took two exposures in each position, stitched them both seperately, and blended the equirectangular panoramas. I was able to figure out a way to stitch two identical (or near identical) panoramas with two different sets of photos. According to theory, the two sets of photos are of the same place taken at the same time without the camera moving, but without Hugin stitching both exactly the same, trying to blend the two exposures would be impossible. Here is my final result:

Click on image to view virtual tour.

On Saturday, I took photos of a house a friend of mine built. This house features a large high-end kitchen, large living and dining room, and this gorgeous conservatory. This room screamed ‘virtual tour’ to me, so I set up and started shooting. Here is the result.

I also took virtual tours from inside the kitchen area, in between the living room and dining room, and inside the master bathroom. I’ll post them as I finish processing them.

Sorry for the lack of posts over the past few days. I have been making virtual tours like crazy! I have added a brand new “Virtual Reality” gallery to my main website. I will be adding more as I make them, so check back from time to time. www.vitoparatore.com

The past few days I have been stitching and re-stitching a 360 by 180 degree panorama I shot in my living room. I have not had the opportunity to take any in other people’s houses, so I have to practice with my own. The learning curve of Hugin (the open source panorama creator I use) is pretty steep, but I am figuring out the nuances of the program and what I have to do to make it stitch efficiently. Hopefully in a few weeks I will have the whole process down well enough to write an article on it. If that happens, you will be the first to know! Check back in the near future for new photos and panoramas.

As I mentioned in my last entry, I bought a Sigma 8mm f/3.5 circular fisheye lens. A couple days before that, I received my Nodal Ninja 5 Lite in the mail. The Nodal Ninja is a panoramic tripod head that allows you to pan horizontally and vertically around the entrance pupil (sometimes called ‘nodal point’) of the lens. This ability prevents parallax between photos when taking single or multiple row panoramas. This past weekend, I used my two newest additions to my photographic collection to create a QTVR, or Quick Time Virtual Reality panorama. By taking 6 photos, one every sixty degrees, one photo straight up, one photo straight down, I captured the image data needed for a panorama 360 degrees around and 180 degrees up and down. I used Hugin, an open source, free-ware software, to stitch the photos together, and Pano2QTVR to convert to a quicktime movie file to view online. The photo below is a link to the final movie. When/if I master this process, I will write an article about it.

*The file is 1.2MB and may take a few seconds/minutes to load depending on your connection.*