Ontario artist and educator Colleen Rose (@ColleenKR, on Twitter) shared a unique view of her art classroom this morning, and the image far surpassed what one would usually get with a standard photo.
Created with the iPhone app Bubbli, the fully spherical view of the room immediately had me seeking out the source app on the iOS App store.
Hours later, as the afternoon sun streamed through my classroom windows and reminded me of the need to take advantage of available light, I packed up my bags and headed outside. A few minutes later I was standing in the back yard of the school waving my phone around in the air.
The “bubble” image above is the result. The app, in conjunction with a powerful upstream stitching application, allowed me to easily create the VR bubble within only a couple of minutes. If you have an accelerometer-supported smart phone, view the image bubble using that, and you will see the image move around you as you tilt and pan your phone. Within a web browser on a computer, use your mouse to view up, down, left, and right.
Prior to making the image shared at the top of this post, I experimented further away from the play equipment, and you can see the results of my first, second, and third attempts on the on.bubb.li site. I don’t know that my “painting technique” (their metaphor) improved all that much from first through fourth — the stitching algorithm does a fantastic job of removing the overlaps. If anything, my composition improved as I learned how well the app/server were able to handle objects close to the camera — something I was initially concerned about having seen previous phone based “pano” apps distort objects in the foreground.
The built-in getting started tutorials provide a quick and clear introduction to the app and the process, and the interface of the app is so simple to use, I’m going to see tomorrow if a child can do it. I’m sure they will be able to.
BONUS: If you email yourself a link to the bubble, you also get a nice little animated GIF thumbnail in your email, and you can suss out the URL if you view the source of the email.
The animated GIF itself is a nice bonus!
Time for another iPhone Photo Project?
The fun in playing with a new iOS camera app today reminds me that it’s been a while since I scoured the iOS app store for new and interesting camera/image apps. In 2011, a number of folks joined me in the April 2011 iPhone Photo Project iPPP • (archives here), and again the subsequent year for the May 2012 iPhone Photo Project iPPP2 • (archives here). Given that 2013, 2014, and 2015 have passed by unrecognized, I’m thinking that today’s app play will herald in a 2016 re-incarnation, the February 2016 iPhone Photo Project iPPP3.
Who’s in?
I’ll formally announce it with an iPPP3 – Day 2 app tomorrow. Consider Bubbli as the app for use for iPPP3 – Day 1. Start your iPhones!
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