This is Immersive Media’s 360° interactive video of earthquake hit Haiti. This amazing new concept has been in development for years and uses a multi-lensed camera to capture all angles which are then processed later using their own post production suite. This will revolutionise the way we capture footage.

Immersive Media’s patented flagship, the Dodeca® 2360 camera system, captures high-resolution video from every direction simultaneously. It delivers 100 million pixels at 30 frames per second (2400×1200 pixels/frame) and supports a number of video formats. And at 2.5 lbs., the Dodeca camera head is highly portable and by using available accessories it is easily attached to automobiles, helicopters, backpacks and rigging equipment for any filming requirement.

This picture of a hunting wolf has won Jose Luis Rodriguez the Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 award. The picture took years to plan, and he spent long hours patiently observing the movements of packs of wolves. He even sketched his idea out on paper. Speaking to the BBC, Jose said:

I wanted to capture a photo in which you would see a wolf in an act of hunting – or predation – but without blood. I didn’t want a cruel image.

This featurette exposes the immense planning and pre-production work that Wes Anderson and his crew have undergone to bring Roald Dahl’s beloved novel to the big screen. The use of real hair, custom made clothes (01:01) and sets (01:16), coupled with on-location sound recordings (02:00) will give a very authentic look and feel to the final movie.

PhotoSketch is an emerging technology that has been creating a buzz lately. It allows users to sketch a scene that they require, which is then created in photo format using images from the web. The application is able to do this thanks to an array of various algorithms that selects appropriate images, discards unwanted ones and then blends them together to produce a composite, much like an artist would using Photoshop.

We present a system that composes a realistic picture from a simple freehand sketch annotated with text labels. The composed picture is generated by seamlessly stitching several photographs in agreement with the sketch and text labels; these are found by searching the Internet. Although online image search generates many inappropriate results, our system is able to automatically select suitable photographs to generate a high quality composition, using a filtering scheme to exclude undesirable images. We also provide a novel image blending algorithm to allow seamless image composition. Each blending result is given a numeric score, allowing us to find an optimal combination of discovered images. Experimental results show the method is very successful; we also evaluate our system using the results from two user studies.

Visit the site (if available) here. Read the paper here.

Computer scientists at the University of Washington’s Graphics and Imaging Laboratory have extended Microsft’s Photosynth algorithms to produce 3D renders of cities using thousands of Flickr photos. Previously, the algorithms could only handle specific landmarks made from a few hundred photos. This has been improved, so the program can handle more – 4,600 photos are used to produce this 3D render of The Old City of Dubrovnik, Croatia. Venice involved 250,000 images, which took 27 hours to match and 38 hours to reconstruct.

It is hoped that these renders will become more detailed over time, and the characteristics of these ancient cities preserved in case reconstruction is required due to earthquakes or flooding.