The Kuwait Towers in Middle East by Eric Walker
Eric Walker, a blog reader sent me a link to a 360 Panorama he took at the Kuwait Towers. I thought he used some special equipment since the panorama is seamless and very well made but after talking to him it turns out he used just a regular camera with some accessories and software. Here is how he does his panoramas:
– He uses a regular point and shoot camera on regular tripod but he’s added a panorama tripod head mount (similar to these)
– He takes on average 40 shots depending on the scene. He prefers to have a tall structure nearby so that the majority of the panorama doesn’t result in just a plain blue sky. To get a clear shot of the ground below the camera without the camera shadow, he cheats and moves the camera back a bit and then takes the shot
– He uses the photo stitching software PTGui to stitch the photos all together. You can get that software from [Here]
– As a last step he uploads the final stitched image to his 360 Cities account where it is then reviewed by their council of reviewers. If they don’t find any stitching errors or other problems, the panorama gets published to their website and it can then be placed in Google Earth (360 Cities is the only panorama site that is partnered with Google)
Here are some other Kuwait panoramas Eric has taken:
Behind the Kuwait Towers
The Scientific Center of Kuwait
Mutla Ridge
Here are some Kuwait panoramas taken by other photographers:
Onboard Al-Boom Dhow
Hawally Park
Dhow in Souk Sharq
360 Mall
Kuwait Seaside Sunset
Heritage Souk
Salhia Complex
Water Clock in Souk Sharq Kuwait
Rooftop Swimming Pool
12 replies on “360 Panoramas around Kuwait”
والله الصورة قوية ما شاء الله عليه
Wonderful… Thank you for sharing.
Awesome! These are really cool for showing to people curious about Kuwait 😛
There is also this other website…
https://www.worldwidepanorama.org/worldwidepanorama/wwppeople/html/AbdulazizAAlShalabi.html
Wow that’s great stuff there.
well, when i once posted about this on 248am forum about my teaching classes on how to create this professionally with some high end software and had a link to my sample .exe file too ! i got banned forever for posting that ad now wtf… 🙁 !
lol
If you came in with zero posts and suddenly posted for the first time linking to a .exe then yeah you probably got banned.
:/ well if you couldn’t trust me at least you could trust bitdefender ! all the Mediafire files are first scanned with it. incase you though i was some kinda virus or Trojan distributor ! did you even care to see that panorama i shot ? it was with 200+ pictures ! alright man forget it…
Well lets be clear, first of all you didn’t sign up using the nickname Burhan since there is another Burhan in the forum that’s active. So you signed up with a different name and there is no way to know if that’s you or not.
Secondly it’s not my job to scan files for viruses. The forum gets a lot of spam bots and I try to delete those accounts as soon as they popup. If you came in with no history of posts and suddenly linked to an .exe file then it’s a ban simple as that.
It’s nothing personal against you it’s just security related.
This is astonishing work, it looks hard to stich the pictures together but never before that i thought it could be done by simple equipment. I have to try it with my camera. Keep up with the good work
Thank you very much. It definitely takes practice and there are limitations – for example, if a moving object is bigger than your camera field of view (like ocean waves if you are standing on the beach, for example) then it will be impossible to stitch them together seamlessly. The program is very good, but you have to play around and learn by trial and error. It’s not easy, but after about 8 months of this hobby, I have learned a lot. I would encourage anyone to give it a try. It really makes your audience feel like they are there, and not just viewing a framed photograph at the artistic whim of the photographer.
When I first started, I didn’t use a tripod or panoramic head at all! Just standing and trying to keep the lens of the camera in the same position in space as I rotated my body. Not easy, but it can work if no object is too close to the camera (the farther away something is, the less it will be affected by the parallax of moving the camera lens around a bit). I encourage everyone who is interested to explore the site (360cities) and the program (free trial period) and see what they discover.
Also, the site has over 10,000 panoramas from all over the world! There have been many an afternoon where I have gotten lost at my computer, simply “traveling” from one panorama to the next, exploring the environments. Explore the site!
I have talked with the owner of the site, and there are possibilities of improving the experience, including better controls and the possible inclusion of audio with the panoramas!