The beginning of 360˚ interactive product photography

A personal story of  taking 360˚ degree interactive product photographs.

The turntable photography has been around for many years especially in Europe. In 2003, I discovered 360˚ interactive photography for the first time via Apple’s website. I believe the 360˚ image was of third generation iPod with a white touch sensitive wheel. I was mesmerized and blown away by how cool it was. The most amazing part was it was a 360˚ interactive multi-row. I am good at figuring out how things were done, but I just could not wrap my head around how this was technically possible. Well, Apple being a gazillon dollar company; I guess money was no object for them.

Fast forward eight years; I had an opportunity to be part of a new startup company in California. He had already designed and manufactured a working turntable with software to control the motor. He needed someone with photography background to help him to further develop the software and other ways to simplify the setup. So, I became a part owner in late 2010. Since we were short-handed, everyone had to take multiple responsibilities, so I was doing the market research for the company to see what our competitors were doing, and I was surprised to find there were only two or maybe three companies developing and already had their hardware out on the US market. A year later, we were able to refine the software and the hardware so that our setup could be triggered wirelessly. I thought we finally had a product we can mass-produced to bring it to the market, but by now there were many more competitors with similar hardware out on the market. My business partner made the decision to abandon the turntable development and start something that’s more challenging and dynamic.

To be continued. . .