Being a part of capturing the inauguration last week was a very exciting experience for us. We were up bright and early getting ready to accept all the user generated photos and the efforts paid off when we saw the almost immediate results from our work on live TV. John King did a great job steering the viewer around, even if Colbert noticed not everything went perfectly. The exposure was awesome and the synths created were really great, we’ve organized some of the best on our inauguration synth map.
And below is a little summary of some of the great responses we got:
Shooting enough photos from different angles to produce a great synth is a bit of a challenge for one photographer, but when you have thousands of photographers all contributing to the same synth it gets even more challenging… With that being said we’re very pleased with how this turned out.
View the synth
I encouraged readers to create synths from wherever they were watching the inauguration as we thought it would be great to create lots of synth portals to this one event… We got a few of those synths, but what we got a lot of were people emailing in a photo of how they watched the inauguration. Some were fun, sweet, a little… unique.
Along with synths of the moment Obama was sworn in, some really great synths were created of the events around the inauguration. MSNBC, capture some of these and the one below of the Lincoln memorial concert from a couple days before the inauguration. The synth has some great coverage of the national mall.
We enjoyed coverage in a lot of blogs last week. Here are just a few. (If I missed your post please leave a comment with your url below)
Slate: All I Wanna Do Is Zoom Zoom Zoom Zoom
“Microsoft's Photosynth, the best thing to happen to photography since the digital camera.”
Lifehacker: Relive the Inauguration in 3D Photo Style
GigaOM: The Inauguration: Most User-generated Content Ever?
“In other words, the inauguration may represent the greatest influx of user-generated content onto the Internet, in one day, ever.”
CrunchGear: CNN’s Inauguration Photosynth will blow your mind
GIZMODO: CNN's Inauguration Day Photosynth Compiles Crowdsourced Photos in 3D (But It's No Hologram!)
“Wolf has been somewhat confusedly hyping CNN's "Photosynth moment," much to Anderson Cooper's chagrin, and behold, here it is, presented by CNN's intrepid multitouch whiz John King. Wait, there's Oprah!”
ReadWriteWeb: Photosynth to Crowdsource Synth of the 44th Presidential Inauguration
Mashable: Photosynth Comes of Age in CNN’s Inauguration Coverage
“The results are stunning – a 3D view of the Inauguration, allowing you to zoom in and out and see the moment from various vantage points.”
I watched the stream posts on twitter about Photosynth and more than 2,000 came in over the course of the inauguration… it was a pretty entertaining thing to watch. Lots of nice things were said… and a few not so nice things. Some of my favorite are listed below.
Nice
waynemcfetridge: photosynth is pretty cool and silverlight on my mac didn't tear a hole in the fabric of space and time
hritchie: Has anybody played with Photosynth? It sounds like something from the so-crazy-it-might-just-work basket
tonyvia: I hate to say it, but I'll give M$ credit on the photosynth technology
michaelrose: LOVING what Microsoft Photosynth people have done with everyones 'Inauguration moment' photos - a Minority Report moment –
100ftzombie: WOw photosynth rocks when you have an event like this, first time I'm not sick of hearing about it
NickSeguin: photosynth FOR THE WIN
jackthewhack: CNN's Photosynth was absolutely orgasmic! Loved it!
ChrisLAS: Love'em or hate'em CNN is rockin Microsoft Photosynth, and it looks awesome.
ims: I doubted the epicness of CNN's Photosynth until they just showed the working synth of "The Moment." Epic.
valdezign: Wow. Amazing Photosynth of the Inauguration. I don't say this often, but way to go Microsoft!
pelf: first time i see Photosynth applied to a real scenario. it is indeed amazing technology!
jpstephens: Photosynth is pretty badass....
Frustrated
(Including these so you all know we’re listening and working hard to improve Photosynth… will make sure to be… less LAME too)
calinative: Annoyed by PhotoSynth. Cool technology but these demos make it look like it's hard to navigate.
decodergrizzly: CNN's 'photosynth' = L.A.M.E.
seldo: Hugely underwhelmed by Microsoft's photosynth. Thought they were going to glue it all together into a 3D model of the scene. Pfft.
chrisbrowntv: "The Moment" photosynth is leaving me underwhelmed. The awesome 360° technology covers about 15 percent of the scene; coulda been very cool.
P.S. Want to stay updated with Photosynth on twitter? Follow us @photosynther