Sony to hold London festival – Sony World Photography Awards and the World Photography Festival come to London, April 2011.
For the first time in its history, the Sony World Photography Awards is being held in London on April 27, 2011. Previously held each April in Cannes at the prestigious Palais des Festivals, the move to London heralds an exciting new chapter for the world’s largest photographic awards programme. Billed as the global photographic event of the year, it celebrates the very best in photography from around the world, from the next generation of emerging photographers through to the esteemed masters of the art.
- Image by Ian Muttoo via Flickr
The awards will take place during the annual World Photography Festival & Exhibition which is being held at Somerset House from 26 April 2011, with the Festival running to 1 May and the exhibitions through to 22 May. This is the first time that London will host a major international photographic festival, and the programme will be packed with an eclectic mix of events, talks, seminars, workshops and exhibitions of the winning images from the 2011 Sony World Photography Awards. Honorary Judges for the 2011 Awards will be present and participating in the Festival, including Pulitzer prize winning photographer Liu Hueng Shing, world renowned photographer RJ Muna and industry leaders such as Elisabeth Biondi (Visuals Editor, New Yorker) Mike Trow (Photo Editor, British Vogue) and Caprice Horn (Director, Gallerie Caprice Horn).
Following World Photography Festivals in Shanghai in September 2010, San Francisco in November 2010, and Sao Paolo in March 2011, the six day Festival in London is open to everyone with a passion for photography – professionals, amateurs and students and, of course, the photo-loving public.
Astrid Merget, Creative Director, the World Photography Organisation comments: “Throughout the year, we run many international photography events, engaging with thousands of photographers world-wide. Each event culminates in the principal World Photography Festival which we’re thrilled to be holding in London for the first time this year, at Somerset House, and will offer public events, exhibitions and the Sony World Photography Awards. This annual Festival brings together the largest network of global industry leaders and celebrates photography whilst supporting participating photographers.”
Gwyn Miles, Director of Somerset House comments: ‘Somerset House is delighted to be hosting the first ever London-based World Photography Festival, and we are looking forward to working with World Photography Organisation to establish the Festival and Exhibition in the UK. Somerset House is committed to celebrating and showcasing photography in all its different guises, from established photographers to emerging talent and previous photographic exhibitions include Norman Parkinson and Nick Knight. We’re thrilled to be taking part in this prestigious, international event.’
Festival programme highlights include:
- In the Photographers’ Studio – A five evening series of intimate conversations with some of the greatest living photographers. Discover the personal journeys that internationally renowned photographers such as Tom Stoddart and Pedro Meyer, have taken through the years, as they converse with other known industry folk such as Jon Jones (Director of Photography for the Sunday Times Magazine) to reveal their stories and showcase both known and unknown work.
- The Sony World Photography Awards 2011 Winners’ Showcase – See hundreds of images on display from the winners and runner-ups of the 2011 Awards programme. Experience a vast collection of international contemporary photography, spanning all genres including Documentary, Sport, Portraiture, Landscape, Fashion and more.
- Intensive workshops covering such topics as book design, photographic curatorship, compiling your portfolio, portraiture photography and merging film with stills.
- Student focused workshops on the business of photography, how to network, how to build a portfolio and creating a unique identity.
- World Photography Seminar Series including a panel debate on the London Photography Scene and a photojournalism roundtable.
- iStockalypse event brought for the first time to London by iStockphoto
- The Save the Children Project
For further details please visit the World Photo website.
Filed under news by on Dec 21st, 2010. Comment. 
- Image via Wikipedia
Google Earth 6.0
A virtual walking tour with a mouse scroll wheel is one of the new features in Google Earth 6.0. The streets available to tour on Google Earth are in selected city locations and highlighted in blue. Google Earth 6.0 also makes it significantly easier to access historical images. Backgrounds in Google Earth are now filled with 3-D constructs.
Google introduced a major upgrade for Google Earth on Monday that gives users the ability to zoom in on many locations on the planet and instantly transform the perspective to a view from the street. The free Google Earth 6 release also includes other new features for exploring the planet virtually, including historical images for selected urban locations.
Though Street View took its inaugural bows in Google Earth during 2008, the new release now fully integrates the virtual walking tour experience. "You can journey from outer space right to your doorstep in one seamless flight," noted Google Earth Product Manager Peter Birch in a blog.
Google Earth at Ground Level
The streets available for conducting virtual walking tours are all in selected city locations. To switch to Street View mode, drag the Google Pegman icon at the top of the zoom control onto any road highlighted in blue, Birch wrote.
"Unlike our earlier Street View layer, you can now move seamlessly from one location to another as if you're walking down the street by using the scroll wheel on your mouse or the arrow keys on your keyboard," Birch wrote. "If you want to visit somewhere farther away, simply click the 'exit' button and you'll immediately return to an aerial view where you can easily fly to your next destination."
Google Earth 6 integrates a huge array of photos of major urban areas, including major landmarks and tourist attractions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. When visiting these locations using Google Earth, users are able to pan 360 degrees to view everything else in the area.
Though historical photos have been available in Google Earth since 2006, the new release makes it significantly easier for users to discover and access these images. "When you fly to an area where historical imagery is available, the date of the oldest imagery will appear in the status bar at the bottom of the screen," Birch wrote. "If you click on this date, you'll instantly be taken back in time to view imagery from that time period."
Enhanced Realism
With Google Earth 6, the goal is to enhance the program's realism by shading in previously empty backgrounds with 3-D constructs of buildings, trees and landscape. Over the past few years, Google has learned how to represent trees in a realistic way that can scale to cover places in Google Earth where trees exist en masse, such as urban parks and large forests.
More than 50 different tree species are currently available in 3-D views of downtown San Francisco and Golden Gate Park, as well as in major park areas of Chicago, New York City, Athens, Berlin and Tokyo. "With 3D trees in Google Earth, we've brought characteristic trees to life, from the palm trees that dot San Francisco's bay-front Embarcadero Street, to the olive trees that cling to the Acropolis in Athens, to the flowering dogwoods found in Tokyo's parks," wrote Google Earth Program Manager Raleigh Seamster in a blog.
The Google Earth window is full of data that in dense urban areas will clutter the screen. However, the controls on the left side of the window give users the ability to click on or off the data points they wish to see — from roads, photos and 3-D images of major buildings to icons representing local businesses, parks and government offices.
source: toptechnews.com/
Filed under news by on Dec 3rd, 2010. Comment.
We’ve all seen “virtual tours” of open houses on real-estate sites. What if every location, every restaurant, store, museum, theme park ride and airport had a virtual tour on Google Maps? In three or four years that may be the case as a result of the acquisition of an Israeli company called MentorWave Technologies (or Quicksee), for approximately $10 million.
Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz first reported the acquisition yesterday.
Quicksee makes it fairly simple for individuals to create “virtual tours” of locations, things and experiences. Obviously this is directed toward Google Maps/Earth (see ideo below) but may go well beyond Maps to product tours and other applications as well.
Right now Google uses StreetView cars (or trikes) to capture exteriors and outdoor locations. The company has also been sending still photographers to document building and store interiors. Quicksee would potentially speed that process dramatically by enabling user-generated tours (which can be done today but not simply and uniformly).
Here’s how Quicksee describes itself:
Founded in late 2004, Quiksee is a privately held start-up company, established to develop, manufacture, and market comprehensive interactive media solutions utilizing its proprietary imaging technology. Our multi-disciplinary team includes scientists and engineers in the fields of new media, networking and optical technologies, and hardware/software integration. Several of our executives and researchers have past experience working in organizations such as Microsoft, Orbotech, and Medcon. Their valuable experience places Quiksee in a formidable market position and allows us to pursue the innovations we are so passionate about.
Based in Herzliya Pituach, one of Israel’s leading high-tech centers, Quiksee works closely with its business clients & media partners to provide customized immersive visual experiences designed to meet their specific requirements. Quiksee aims to become a world leader in the visual documentation market, providing state-of-the-art technologies for people and organizations looking for simple, efficient, and cost-effective visual solutions.
The video immediately below looks as though a Quicksee employee put together a demo of how Quicksee and Google Maps would integrate (perhaps to pitch the technology to Google). It gives us a bit of a glimpse into the future of Google Maps:
Boston-based Everyscape can do a version of this today with still photography. And Everyscape is set to roll out a number of partnerships in the local segment soon (ie., directories).
Microsoft has Photosynth and has demonstrated video integration and live streaming in maps. So Google won’t be the only one offering more dynamic and interactive interior photography in the not-too-distant future.
I would also fully expect Quicksee tours to be integrated to be showcased in Google Maps for Mobile as well.
Filed under 360 virtual tours, news by on Sep 14th, 2010. Comment.
The days of unlimited flowing champagne and delectable canapé trays floating through a beautifully staged, uninhabited home may be numbered, thanks to the birth of the virtual open house.
How we buy real estate is an ever-changing process and with the 3-D technology of Canadian company Uther Interiors (part of the Virtual World Web and provided by Utherverse Digital, Inc.), potential buyers don't even need to get off the couch in their old home to find a new home. They can test out the couch in the new home from the old couch and old home too! By eliminating any pre-schlepping to listed homes that lack potential, time and energy is saved for all parties concerned.
HousingWatch spoke with Uther Interiors CEO and founder Brian Shuster about how a virtual perspective on real estate is in our future:
Will the 3-D Web revolutionize the U.S. real estate market?
Brian Shuster: The Virtual World Web [3-D Web] will give real estate the same kind of benefits that the flat web gave to stores like Amazon. It will totally revolutionize the U.S. real estate market by making it much more efficient than it could ever have been before. More than anything else, with UI's new 3-D Home Tours, the potential buyer will instantly know if the place feels like home. Within a few years, all serious houses for sale will have to have virtual listings on the 3-D web, just as today, any real business must have a website.
How does this work for potential buyers?
Homebuyers will have the ability to visit dozens of houses in a single day from the comfort of their home. First, they'll use something like Google Maps and Street View to find homes for sale in their price range [and] that are in areas that they like. They'll view actual pictures of the neighborhood and the exterior of the home. The time saved from spending weeks or months going to homes that are disappointment-after-disappointment will be enormous. Being able to narrow down the choice from 50 to three or four will make buyers much less discouraged, and will speed up the sales process tremendously.
How does the 3-D technology do that?
They'll simply use a 3-D web browser to place themselves along with their spouse and agent into each home that they want to view. They'll walk around the house inspecting each room to see the size, the shape, and the overall flow and feel of the house. With the Utherverse Interiors 3-D Home Tours, the potential buyer will walk from one room to another, through the hallways, looking at the placement of the bathrooms and the closets — they can even stand in the showers. Users can walk up to the windows and see the view, or, they can sit in a chair and decide whether they like the angle of the television set.
Doesn't this already exist online for listings?
The current state of virtual tours is a fish-eye video that spins around a room. This kind of tour provides the viewer with very limited information. It fails to give the potential buyer a sense of size and proportion of the room. It also fails to give perspective on the whole house. There is no way to sense how it feels to walk from one room to another, or how the room works in relation to the hallways and the doors.
How do you "place yourself into each home?"
By having avatars that represent the buyers, [they] will be able to gain perspective that they could otherwise never have obtained. The sensation of navigating within the house this way is very lifelike. Once a user has tried it, they usually say that it was just like actually visiting the house. Within minutes, they'll know whether they like the house and whether it "feels" like home.
How does the seller of a home use this?
A home seller simply takes a few pictures of each room in their house, and sends those, along with a floor plan, to UtherInteriors.com's design department. Within a few days, a 3-D model of the home will appear online.
Where does this leave real estate agents?
For real estate agents [it is] the ability to have open houses 24-hours a day and to have listings that are always accessible to potential buyers. [It] will speed up the home-selling process dramatically. Selling agents will only actually tour houses to people who have already visited the home virtually, so [it will be] only qualified interested buyers who are just doing a reality check of the house before they purchase.The job of real estate agents will be made much easier, meaning that they can handle more listings, and homes will sell more quickly.
This could be very helpful from an aesthetic perspective, as well when it comes to furniture and design.
As an added benefit, the buyer of the real home will also obtain a copy of the virtual home, so that they can then use that model to plan their move or redecorate their home virtually. Users even have the ability to replace the furniture that they see in the home with their own furniture. They can really discover what the house will be like to live in. They can virtually repaint the walls, redo the carpet or drapes. Once they've got the house looking the way they like, they can hand the plans to an interior designer, contractor, or to the movers to let them know where everything should go.
Do you anticipate there being people who buy without ever seeing the property in real life?
Some people will certainly use the ability to view a house remotely to make actual home purchases. But those people will be the exception. Most buyers will use the 3-D Web to sift through the dozens of potential properties so that they only have to see houses that they know will be suitable for them and their family. I envision this as a huge time-saver, but it will not replace the final walk-through for anyone who can visit the house before they buy it.
Could this technology mean the death of the open house?
Calling for the death of the open house is a scary proposition. But the ability to experience a home and to experiment with it in ways that you can't do in the real world, like testing how your furniture will look, makes an open house seem like a very inefficient way of attracting real buyers to a house. I think there will always be a reason for an open house, if for nothing more than to have a party for the seller and to attract the attention of buyer's agents.
via: http://www.housingwatch.com
Filed under Articles, news by on Jul 13th, 2010. Comment.
