I went through my blogposts for 2011 with the idea of making a top 10 list of photography adventures, and ended up with two lists. I suppose that means it was a good year. I use Goodreads to keep track of my reading. I suppose I could sort iTunes chronologically to see what music I’ve been listening to. Before I started blogging I used a paper calendar to track my activities — everything from photoshoots to concerts to bike rides. But Google Calendar or iCal aren’t the place I want to store this information. Online calendars feel mostly like work-related tools to me.

Deadpan monologist Joe Frank had a great episode about how you determine what makes your list of memories, and what almost makes the list. I wish I could remember the name of the episode. What tools do you use to capture the highlights of your year?

Part I: January through June

1. Photographing the BLF for Hi-Fructose Magazine
2. Night photography workshops at Paul’s Junkyard with Troy Paiva
3. The desert trip diaries are my favorite blog posts to look back on
4. A few nights in a desert airplane boneyard
5. We said farewell to the Pearsonville junkyard
6. The demolition time-lapse video of Oak Knoll Naval Hospital
7. Cutting cars in half at Paul’s Junkyard
8. Another crazy desert trip with astronauts and tequila
9. Back to the desert with film sets and mining ruins and Llano
10. Hanging out at an old Nevada mine and at Bodie Ghost Town and sharing epiphanies

Part II: July through December

1. A private tour of Alcatraz at night
2. The abandoned cement plan 360 degree night photo that got me going on panos
3. Up above SFO with a time-lapse from Sweeney Ridge
4. A lightning storm over Paul’s Junkyard
5. Discerning the complexities of California by repeatedly firing a camera out the car window
6. The sadness of a head-on collision while shooting at night in a junkyard
7. Revisiting 360 pano post-processing with a photo of the Jeremiah O’Brien
8. Mare Island 360 degree night panoramas while celebrating The Nocturnes turning 20 years old
9. Night 360 panoramas at an abandoned desert mining area
10. A Dumbarton swing bridge 360 panorama and night 360′s at The Big M
    

I’m continuing to refine my pano gear, shooting, and post-processing techniques. Photographer Tong Lam emailed recently to let me know that he’s been enjoying the night 360′s, and referred to this growing body of work as unreal estate. The most common use of 360×180 panoramas is for virtual tours in the real estate world. The locations that I’m interested in photographing, and the surreal nature of long exposure night photography make unreal estate a very fitting play on words (even if it is already the title of a death metal album).

During last month’s full moon I made a total of ten 360 degree night panoramas at Big M Automotive. Using a technique that’s common in virtual tours, I’ve been experimenting with adding hotspot areas that allow you to move from one panorama to another. If you click on the workshop building in the panorama above, you’ll be taken to another panorama inside the workshop. Click above the red Fury in the interior pano to go back outside.

Linking between panos only works in the Flash version, not on the HTML5 version that’s viewable on an iPad and iPhone. After putting together the rest of the panoramas from the Big M, I plan to experiment with linking them all together for a virtual full moon tour of the yard. Stay tuned.

Take a look inside the workshop at Big M Automotive in this 360 panorama featuring the owner’s beautifully restored 1957 Plymouth Fury. More night panoramas of the big fins at the Big M coming soon!

New: This 360 panorama uses Flash in a regular web browser, but will also work on your iPad or iPhone using HTML5. The multi-resolution files were created in Pano2VR. And many thanks to the nice folks at PanoPress for developing a free WordPress plugin for 360 panoramas.

This 360 degree night panorama was shot during the December full moon at Big M Automotive. Thanks to John for the hospitality. Use your mouse to spin around and see the Ford. Zoom in on the reflection of the full moon in the bumper of the Buick.

Technical details:

• 6 shots around at -10 degrees and one zenith +60 degrees
• Tokina 10-17mm fisheye set at 15mm on a Canon 5D Mark II
• Really Right Stuff (RRS) PG-02 panohead with Nodal Ninja lens ring
• Each exposure was 2 minutes at f/9.5, ISO 800
• Stitched in PTGui and output using Pano2VR
• Full resolution file is 14,000 x 7,000 pixels