I Shoot Virtual Reality (VR) Tours:
A Certified Google Virtual Tour Photographer in Nashville , Tennessee.
360º Virtual Tours (VT) are growing in popularity. Google has taken the forefront in this arena with the Street View program. Since 2007, it has expanded from street perspectives, to off-road corridors, and in 2010, indoor virtual reality tours.
As a Certified Trusted Google Street View Photographer, I can shoot any non-residential business for Google Maps in 360º. For residential virtual tours, such as real estate sales, I use panographic software for website presentations. These images can also be used with virtual reality headsets.
The camera is mounted on a robotic head, technology that was developed for the NASA Mars missions. The robot and a DSLR camera produces life-like 360º x 180º panoramas. I shoot 54 HDR+ images in a single location and stitch them together with a sophisticated software, producing a high-resolution 3D like photo spheres free of distortion. Tours are made by shooting a series of perspectives. It’s as close as you can get to being there. My tours had over 4 million views on Google Maps in 2016.
Take a virtual reality tour of the historic Nashville Downtown Presbyterian Church:
Note: get the full screen experience by clicking the icon in the lower left of the video frame. A zoom option is available also for reading the historical signage. Some markers are embedded in the floating icons.
Image below is interactive. Click the arrows to navigate around the Fort Negley Visitor Center in Nashville, Tennessee
Vanderbilt University
The blue lines below denote street and walking routes. The blue circles represent amateur 360º’s, and the orange ones are professional indoor tours shot by Trusted Google Photographers (I did not shoot this one).
A Google Trekker can be borrowed from Google for institutions to cover large pedestrian walkways and trails.
Panoramas
Google Street View goes indoors
Interior panoramas are complex to shoot. They have to be shot in manual mode with no auto-focus. There are many photographic challenges including lighting, exposure and proximity to close objects that cause distortion. My system fix this, combined with a sophisticated photo stitching software.
Virtual Tour Points:
10,000 pixel wide sphere’s are so detailed that you can zoom into a scene and read incredible detail. I can also add informational hot-spots to feature details of landmarks, like the history of the Bell Tower at Belmont University. For residential tours you can have features, like appliances and home improvements. Audio and video embeds can also be placed in these tours.
“Nine in 10 home buyers today rely on the internet as one of their primary research sources, and 52 percent turn to the web as their first step. In fact, real estate related searches on Google.com grew 22% year-over-year. Additionally, approximately one-fifth of real estate related searches happen on mobile devices, and Google real estate related searches on mobile devices grew 120% percent year-over-year from 2011 to 2012.”
– The National Association of Realtors
Fort Negley Visitor Center Tour | Carnton Grounds Tour
Planned construction
What about Virtual Tours of planned construction? From Blue Prints you can now bring your architectural drawings to life: directly from Blue Prints!
Blueprint Workflow:
Google 3D Viewer
Google Cardboard 3D Viewer
The 360º virtual reality experience has never been easier – or cheaper. Download the free Google Street View app, and order the Google Cardboard Viewer for only $15 USD. Viewing (and creating) 360 Panoramic spheres is easy with the app. These can be viewed on Google Maps and even embedded on a web page or post.
To find panorama’s, go to Google maps and click on the stick-man icon on the bottom right hand of the screen. Zoom into an area and look for the blue and orange circles. The blue ones are amateur 3D spheres, the orange ones are Google Street View professional virtual reality tours (I am certified to shoot both).
Contact: Bob Henderson – from the Athens of the South in Nashville, Tennessee
