The concept of blending BEFORE & AFTER pano’ perspectives is on my mind lately, more from the traditional panorama angle than Matterport or other 3-D scanned tours (I’m still too much of a newbie/hobbyist at those to consider such a concept with that for now).

The BLENDING idea of BEFORE & AFTER panoramas stems from a major wildfire event in our area I 2014 of which I would like to focus on the RESILIENCY of people and nature for an article in m “Lake Chelan Magazine” digital publication (https://www.lakechelanmagazine.com/lake-chelan/lake-chelan-magazine/), this autumn, after wildfire season has passed again.

[I am one of a few volunteer contributors helping the new local publication take flight .. featuring history, nature, etcetera from the area.]

Anyway...
Five years ago (2014) I did a collection of regular/traditional 360 panoramas in Pateros, Washington, USA; a small town in North Central Washington state that was ravaged by major wildfires back then (2014). It was historically devastating for several small communities in this region as well.

I’d captured several spherical images of the area directly after the damage was done, but it was not to sell photos to news (the wound was way too raw to people I knew). Rather, I was aiming to later show how resilient people and nature can be with time; after perhaps only after 5 or 10 years had passed, after rebuilding and replanting had moved beyond the scars and taking root, revisiting those events.

Several lightening strikes that converged in the Chelan Complex Wildfires had passed over Chelan Butte (near us) and taken out many homes along Lake Chelan’s south shore in one direction, and in another direction had jumped the Chelan River taking more homes and warehouses, then jumped the Columbia River and continued on for many miles on both sides of the Methow River destroying far more.

I had photographed the Chelan Butte earlier that year (in spring) before the summer of extreme wildfires. So, I used that contrast as a test for blending two equirectangular panoramas from the same point of view, blending the far greener/flowering “BEFORE” with the burnt/scorched “AFTER” view as a see-through panorama, with the idea of later doing the REVERSE of the devastation as the BEFORE and resiliency as the AFTER.

I was not very satisfied with the viewer experience of the resultant test blend; it was done as an oval cutout with Photoshop showing through the spring green and into the scorched/burned perspective.

Here it is (and ideas for improving the viewer experience are welcomed).:
https://roundme.com/tour/384181/view/1328623

Before the month is out, I plan to return to Pateros to capture a few panoramas of an area from near a few of those same spots (the more interesting burnt perspectives where buildings have not covered the spot where my tripod was set).

While I searched the forum for “Before & After”, etcetera, without results (assuming I’m missing more effective keywords), I’m thinking some people in Dan’s amazingly-diverse virtual-tour forum have surely done far more creative examples they wouldn’t mind sharing here?!?

If there was a way to spin around twice with a 360 viewing headset, the first spin being one perspective and the second being the alternative view, that would likely be interesting, but likely requires specialized app (application) programming of which there probably isn’t yet enough call for, or I’d need to do so as a looping video (a friend did one of those for me as a change of seasons looping surround .. perhaps I’ll look for the link to that later). 😉

Again, sharing creative ways to blend various perspectives are invited as well. Plus, if I knew how to add new TAGS, they might be “blending two 360s”, “changing seasons”, “before and after”, “stages of construction”, “illusion of time-lapse”, etcetera.

Thank you in advance for sharing examples and ideas!
🙏 Tim Oldfield