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Following on from DOS 6 I started out my real computing knowledge on an Amstrad NoteBook with a 20 meg hard drive! Subsequently I have alternated between PC and Mac but since the fusion between the Intel processor & the Mac, I can truely say I love the Apple Mac.Its brought back pleasure to computing to my mind.
I still have a play and use legacy programs from Windows by using Parallels Desktop, but all the graft is done on the Mac.
Photographic interest came from my maternal Grandfather. He used to build his own cameras and enlargers. Making his own photographic plates was just something he did. My first camera was a Ziess Ikon bellows camera, inherited from my Father who obtained it in Germany during the war. I still have it. Then came the reflex, a Minolta and very briefly a Bronica and a Hasselblad, they came to me on loan for a brief period, both giving stunning images.
My route to all this came through trying to create what used to be known as bubble panoramas. We are going back to about 1995 when something called Omniview came onto the market showing spectacular walk-through images of one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s homes, the Internet was still relatively new and digital cameras were not for the masses. Images had to be scanned and processed the first proprietary software I used was Photo-Vista v1.0, in 1996, there were no limitations on fields of view.
Behind all this gathering hype and an eye for the main chance by commercial software companies, a German Mathematics Professor, Helmut Dersch, was quietly compiling and recompiling his Java based program which mathematically restructured images so that they could be viewed in various projections, on which much of the new proprietary software was based.
I’m not sure how the resulting legal battles broke out, were fought or indeed have they been won and by whom? But enthusiastic photographers have continued to use the original Pano Tools software Helmut produced and supported the compilers of graphic user interfaces, such as PTgui who have brought the techniques to a wider audience by simplifying the process using such interfaces.
One of those very early exponents of Pano Tools was Philippe Hurbain, whose site I visited regularly. It was from here that I saw his kite pages. But it never progressed from my point until years later I came across James Gentles pages by accident researching what was on the web for the Falkirk Wheel. From that point I just had to have a go at KAP.
I’ve started by compiling “aerial bubbles” but I think it was in 1996 the company I worked for then launched a website for Radio Key 103 and Piccadilly Radio in Manchester to celebrate the Manchester Festival that year. I still have the original spins I did for them and will put them up here in time. But I’m going to revisit the subject as with the advent of cheaper digital cameras and the like, the process is now so much simpler and fast with more affordable computing power.
Kites, well I never really thought of them other than for windy days on the beach. But Philippe Hurbain's web site and the KAP fascinated me, how had he taken certain shots. I just could not believe the process but it took some years before I finally got round to trying things myself.
Of course I have had a good grounding in aviation and I have always been interested by the weather, so really it seemed like a natural step to make, being a fusion of all the disciplines I love to dabble with.
Subject matter has been a little problematical. But living
in a very picturesque part of England on the Derbyshire
Cheshire border, it gives me the opportunity to get up
into the Peak District and all the views that affords.
Hopefully it won't end there as North Wales and
the Lake District are to the west and north
respectively.
I also hope to do some Pole Aerial Photography
and to combine that with some underground
photography, we shall see.
