Not as a band as my ID suggests, but as a VR photographer covering the event. SOS Music Festival (vol. 2) was a lot of fun. I took good panoramas everywhere (on stage, backstage, front stage) and the music ROCKED!

One of my favourite performers of the day were Jaffa Phonix. These guys are really creative and their energy spreads all over the crowd. They remind me of the Beastie Boys which I am a big fan of.
Photographing an event like this in 360-degrees was tricky: thousands of people, night photography with colour of lights changing on stage every second, finding a good spot. I’ll write a post soon about best practices of VR photographing an outdoor live event.

The VR photos of the festival will be posted first on SOS Music Festival website. I’ll announce it here when they are online. Last but not least, thanks to the peope I met at Sports Plus, the organizers of this event, for making my job easier: Garo, Reem and Nour.

I’ve been wanting to revisit the Giza Pyramids and take extensive VR photos of this amazing place. My ambition is to either link it to Google maps or Google Earth so you the viewer to can zoom in into the map and then click on the different points around the Giza Pyramids and see a 360˚ view of the location. Truely as if you were standing there yourself.

So what is stopping me? I need help.

I can handle the VR photography side of it. I have a GPS, so I can pinpoint the exact coordinates of every single VR photo I take. And I live 45 minutes away from the Pyramids. What I need is:

- Link Google Maps to display the locations of the VR photos and link them to the URLs.
- Design a user-friendly and simple interface on a webpage which is not language dependent.

I am looking for one (or more) person who can help with what I have just mentioned. This is not a commercial project. No one is paying me to photograph the Pyramids and I can not afford to pay someone to design and build webpages. My ambition is to share the Pyramids with the World.

People who share my same passion and can help should contact me directly. People who share my same passion but can not help, can write their support to this idea the comments link below.

And for everybody, these are VR photos I took a few years ago of the Pyramids:

- A girl and a boy’s enjoyment with the Pyramids distracted by a camera.
- The Sphinx poses as tourists take hundreds of snap shots.
- On top of one of the smaller pyramids, a view of the Giza Pyramids and Cairo.
- Waleed Nassar’s entry for the 2004 World Wide Panorama .

I took this VR photo (virtual tour) of the demonstration that was held infront of Doctor’s Syndicate ‘Dar Al-Hikma’ on Sunday 16th July 2006. Hundreds came out to show support and solidarity with the Lebanese and Palestinian people. Truckloads of Egyptian riot police were present and controlled the protesters by limiting the area where they could voice their protest. I checked Google New today and NOTHING was mentioned about it.

More demonstrations will be organized in the coming days. I’ll try to take more VR photos without being arrested or my camera being confiscated.

I have 2 formats ready for your viewing pleasures: A medium-sized view which is easy to download and requires no plugins (500K / FLASH) and a fullscreen, in-your-face view that requires QuickTime player (1.3MB / QUICKTIME). QuickTime is a free media player and you can download it from here.

As promised in a recent post, I am going to show you 2 VR photos which only one will be submitted to the World Wide Panorama: Gardens. I have not yet decided and would like to hear your opinion on your favourite.

Tuesday 23rd June, 2006
Nikon D50 + Nikon 10.5mm lens
F/9.5 - 1/15 sec - ISO 400 - RAW format

Friday 26th June, 2006
Nikon D50 + Nikon 10.5mm lens
F/2.8 - 1/125 sec - ISO 1600 - RAW format

Don’t forget to leave your comments: likes, dislikes, spotted a stitching error. I’d like to hear your opinions, so add your comments below.