by Cheryl Leschasin
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 12/97) - A trip that began when Maureen Zaleschuck discovered SSI Micro's Web page and the panoramic photo ended for her, her husband Moe and relative Mary MacLean last Friday, as they stood before the bush pilots' monument.

"The panoramic photo did it for me," said Zaleschuck.

The Zaleschucks and MacLean travelled from Tofino, B.C. to see the site and the spectacular view of Old Town, Back Bay, Great Slave Lake and downtown Yellowknife it offers, after checking out a 360-degree photo on the Net.

"You hold the mouse down and it turns 360 degrees," said Moe Zaleschuck.

The photo the Zaleschucks refer to can be found at www.ssimicro.com/~jeremyc/home.html. Northern News Services also offers the feature at www.nnsl.com.

Local programmer Jeremy Childs created the program that allows a series of photographs to be viewed in a seemless perpetual sequence, giving the illusion of actually being at the site, rather than simply viewing individual photo.

Childs came up with a program after James Gaudet took a panorama of photographs of SSI Micro's shop in Fort Providence from the centre of that store.

"I took a 360-degree photo of the Fort Providence shop and brought the pictures to Jeremy to do something with," said Gaudet.

Childs came up with "PanaView," a program that allows series of photographs to be viewed in a never-ending circular sequence.

"I got the intial run up in about four or five hours," said Childs. All together, Childs estimates it took about 17 hours to develop the PanaView software.

Inspired by their intial success, the two went to Pilot's Monument last spring to try the technique again. After a couple of attempts, Childs and Gaudet were able to produce the final image that can be found on the web site.

The Pilot's Monument picture was created using 30 still images taken with a digital camera. The images were adjusted and joined with Adobe Photoshop. The same effect can also be created using a regular camera and scanner.

Childs is selling his software to people who want to use it to make money, but is offering it for free to people who just want it for personal use.