Panoramic Earth welcomes Rob Bowker to our regular contributors. A graphic designer and photographer based in Oxfordshire, he has 25 years experience working as a a graphics and publications manager in the charity sectors. Not content with this, Rob continues to find new photography challenges, inspired by Hockney’s ‘joiners’ back in the eighties and the late Ian Hamilton Finlay’s treatment of text with landscape. More of his work can be seen on Photoshelter and on his own blog.
His foray into panoramic photography and virtual tour work started with a crude 360˚ pan using a borrowed K1000 Pentax 35mm film camera of a long-since demolished area of Bradford slum (which he intends to dig out and put together). Since then he has progressed through animation and film making to the VR panoramas, which, he says, ‘scratch the same itch!’.
Rob, "really loves the way a flash panorama allows you to capture intimate and otherwise uncelebrated corners of the world. On viewing, the effect is immediate and compelling." Not an unusual response to 360 panoramas, and a sentiment voiced by his son seeing an early shot of Wallingford Bridge, who exclaimed, "Wow, it’s just like being there!"
One of his current favourite panoramas is of Queen’s Arbour, near to Wallingford Castle. Rob considers this a work in progress and is moving onto creating fully spherical images, which he will continue to share on Panoramic Earth in the future.
