Panorama Documentation

Every good historian knows that documentation is key to preserving the past.  In an attempt to document our house as I remember it, I'm following several paths.  My first task is to make a record of every physical change our family has made to the property since we moved here in April of 1985.  Granted this method is not 100% accurate because I'm relying heavily on personal recollections, but I'm including as much detail as possible. Between interviewing my mom, dad, brothers, and sister, in addition to scanning my own memory, I'm hoping to have a relatively accurate account of alterations.  This includes any change to a permanent fixture in or around the house.  i.e. I'll record changes in paint color and dimensions of rooms, but I won't necessarily note when we threw out the arm chair over which the dog slobbered and replaced it with a new one.  My method is to record changes room by room as opposed to chronologically.  I'm less likely to forget a change if I focus on one room at a time and besides, the list can always be sorted by year when it is complete.

Below is a snapshot of my spreadsheet (it's a work in progress, click on it to make it larger):

The other documentation route I'm attempting involves panoramas of every room in our house. My goal is to complete this task in a month in order to keep the images as contemporary as possible.  I had a dry run today with the Reception Hall.  Monica (my sister-in-law) let me borrow her digital SLR so that a.) I can have more control over my photos; and b.) to help me decide if I want to invest in a digital SLR for myself.  As of right now, all signs point to yes.  I set up a tripod in the dead center of the Reception Hall and took my first picture.  I then rotated the camera along the same horizontal plane about 25° for each new picture, ensuring I overlapped with the last picture taken.  Once I got completely around the room, I imported the photos and automated a photomerge in Photoshop.  Finally, I imported the flat panorama into the Pana2VR 3.0 software and ran the program to generate a pannable file in Quicktime.   Here is my super quick first attempt at at 360 Panorama.  Take a look for yourself (using Quicktime), then read the comments below. 

Ok, psych!  It's impossible to find a QTVR server on the web, so unfortunately, you can't view the panoramic file interactively.  I'll keep trying, but for now you'll have to settle for the flat pano, which honestly, does no justice to the one that allows you to scroll through the room ala Google Earth Street View. 
If you really want to see the file, let me know.  I can email it and it's viewable in Quicktime.  I just can't find a platform that will allow me to upload the QTVR file to share on the web.

1.  I obviously need to ensure the camera is on FULL manual mode.  Apparently the exposures kept changing on me, so that's something on which I'll have to work.

2.  I need to figure out how make the seam in the Panorama invisible.  The gap in the image is where the left and right side of the flat panorama meet, but why isn't the software recognizing they need to blend?  I'm sure it's just user error and I literally put this whole thing together in an hour tonight, so I'm sure I'll learn as I go.

3.  I've seen 360° Panoramas that show EVERY element of a room, including the floor where the tripod stands (minus the tripod).  I know I need to angle the camera down on the tripod and do a sweep of the room, but I wonder if successful panoramas patch the tripod part of the room with another image sans tripod. 

If anyone has ever attempted this, I'm open to suggestions.  I really have no clue what I'm doing.  Eventually I'd like to include hot spots in my panoramas that link to panoramas of neighboring rooms.  Could be quite cool if i can pull it off....

Title Block: The Story Behind the Blog

My name is Alison and I am a historian. That's my job title....no lie. The title probably sounds more badass to me than to most people, but I love it.  I'm fortunate enough to count myself among the few lucky people who love what they do for a living. Although I love researching the past for work, what I find most rewarding is researching my surroundings. Having lived in the Trenton, New Jersey area my whole life (if you ignore 4 years in North Carolina for undergrad and 2 years in Philly for grad school), you'd think I'm pretty familiar with my town. The more I research, however, the more I discover I know a lot less than I think.

So I've decided to make it my life's goal to learn as much as possible about the past directly and indirectly related to me.  My hope is that in the future this blog will serve as a map of my research methods. My ultimate goal is to produce an illustrated book and/or books detailing the literal and figurative roads traveled before me.  Besides, every historian knows there is nothing better than good documentation.  Primary documents are the most reliable sources, but everything is always open to interpretation.  That's why I want to record this process.  I want my decendents to know my thoughts and reactions.  An African proverb says "Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters."  With this endeavor I know I will play dueling roles.  By recording my experience, I'll act as the lion's historian, defending my story before a hunter has the chance to distort it.  But I will enevitably take on the role of the hunter as attempt to uncover the past.  I do promise though, to do my best to avoid glorifying history.  I have about six more quotes about the prejudice of the historian that I could throw in here, but I'll save them for future posts.  I'm sure I'll need them to defend myself.


I apologize to any readers in advance:  this blog may seem a bit ego-centric at times, but the best way to know yourself is to understand from whom and from where you come.  For those of you not related to me, maybe if you stick with me you can learn something from my experiences and mistakes.  I'll do my best to post tips along the way.  One thing I know for sure is that you can discover some of your best sources in the most unlikely of places, so as a historian, you really have to keep your eyes peeled.

Posts will probably be sporadic.  I'll have to squeeze research in when I can and unfortunately the most promising research venues rarely have weekend hours.  So here we go, firing up the flux capacitor...