VIRTUAL TOUR HONORS MOTHER

360º real estate tours are not a new idea. But when called by a home owner to document his late mother's home before selling it, I soon learned that this was not at all about sales, but about remembrance. In as much as most people are reflected in their home, this was clearly a very personal request (consequently, the name of the client is withheld).

I use a high-resolution DSLR and stitch panoramas from eight captures to exacting standards. It turned out that the high quality of this method was complementary to the client's desire for an accurate, detailed, and final reproduction of the home. There were 21 important locations to be imaged and the client did not live nearby, so the plan was to do all photography in a day, with a second day available for any re-shoots.

Floating Camera

There are varying approaches to creating a 360º image. Some of the popular methods in real estate result in a 360º view that includes looking downwards enough that some of the tripod is initially captured. The tripod is then blurred out, or covered with a 'cap'. There are two side effects to these expediencies. First off, many floors are aesthetically compelling and well worth capturing fully. Secondly, seeing a blur or cap (or worse, a truncated tripod) can take away from the full effect of visual immersion.


When I shoot 360º, I usually take a down shot from the side, and this is processed in the software to  create a clean,  straight down view of the floor, as if no tripod had been used.

In tight spaces, such as a small crowded dining room or bathroom, down shots from the side are difficult. So far I've managed, but the process requires some extra time stitching and retouching those tricky areas.

Vampire Mirror

A perennial bane for 360º photography are mirrors and window reflections. Sometimes the trick is simply to visually align with a non-reflecting feature, such as a wall post. It can also work to get off-center just enough from a head-on view to prevent an unwanted reflection. However, a hall mirror or highly mirrored bathroom may leave no room to hide, and the reflection must be handled more directly.

Think of this as the vampire mirror trick: capture an image of the mirror, which will show the camera, then rotate the camera 180º to capture the scene that would be in the mirror if the camera wasn't there. Finally, cut the second 180º rotated image into the camera included mirror shot in post-processing, thereby creating the illusion that there was no camera. Done carefully, the effect is accurate and convincing... At first the client didn't notice that something must have been done to remove an otherwise visible camera.

Building the tour

As a memorial for remembrance, it was important to the client to let the visuals speak for themselves. This meant we would forgo some of the more typical tour elements, such as menus, information icons for hotspots or intrusive navigation aids, such as always visible floor circles for movement. Each doorway in the house was made into an invisible hotspot. Clicking on a doorway would move the point of view into the corresponding room.

It did seem, however, that one aid to navigation would be the inclusion of a row of thumbnails at the bottom of the screen. This would allow immediate access to any room in the home. Experience has shown that it can become inconvenient to 'walk' through the actual pathways in a home every time a single particular view is desired. 



Another element that was only in my version of the tour, was for a circle target icon, for click-advance movement on a computer, to appear on the floor as the cursor is moved close to a doorway. This conforms more generally with standard practice and made sense when considering the general audience that would see the tour on my site rather than on the client's personal computer.

In Conclusion

The tools for creating an immersive virtual tour are quite robust and have been used extensively in commercial realms. This project was unique given its role as a personal memorial. Available variations would be to embed content, such as video and photo albums.

The home was staged as it had been lived in (i.e. not staged for selling purposes), which the client wanted in order to display the authentic life and personality of his cherished mother.