This is a trend which I have seen all over the internet in the past few years and have admittedly been wondering how it is done. So, I recently attended a workshop with the Douglas Photographic Society on how to do it. And the technique was so much easier than I had expected.
The workshop was fun, we all went outside into a local industrial area to shoot our 360-degree panoramic images. Taking it in turns and all moving round in circles so we didn’t end up in the photo. Half an hour later we were back inside merging our images into a panorama.
Then squashing the image into a square.
Before adding the polar coordinates filter to the image. This filter is what creates the globe image.
This technique creates a tunnel image. You can also create a mini world by flipping the square image 180 degrees before adding the filter.
As I said this method is extremely simple, the only thing you have to be careful with is the edges of your 360 panorama. If these edges do not meet exactly then you will end up with a seam line at the top of your image.
After the workshop I was excited to try it out, so the next opportunity I had I was out at the golden hour walking around a sugar cane field. This gave some great results.
The next thing I wanted to try was underwater scenes. I wasn’t sure if this was going to work but I knew if it did I would get amazing results. I have now tried a few underwater scenes, some have worked, some haven’t. But those that have are just amazing.
See how to make these in the video below. You need to start with a 360 panoramic image, perfectly cropped so that the end match.
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