Photosynth allows researchers to capture rich visual data by combining multiple photographs into an interactive 3D scene. This technique can be used to document spaces, objects, and events in greater qualitative detail than individual photos or video. Photosynth also allows researchers to experience and analyze the spatial relationships between different photographic perspectives in a way that helps make sense of complex visual data and scenes. However, the current implementation of Photosynth has some limitations regarding data handling, privacy, and ethics that researchers would need to consider.

1. Photosynths as a method for capturing rich visual, qualitative data 8th International Qualitative Research Conference 6-8th September Talbot Campus Bournemouth University Gavin D. J. Harper The ESRC Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society Cardiff University 55 Park Place Cardiff CF10 3AT United Kingdom harpergd@cf.ac.uk

2. ‘Widespread analysis that photographs offer a transparent “window on the world” has discouraged critical analysis of the medium.’ ‘The malleability of photographs has injected formerly secure fields with a healthy dose of circumspection’ ‘Photographs may not provide us with unbiased objective documentation of the social and material world, but they can show characteristic attributes of people objects and events that often elude even the most skilled wordsmiths.’ The Limitations of Photography Prosser, Jon., Schwartz, Dona., (1998) Photographs within the sociological research process In: Prosser (1998) Image-based research: a sourcebook for qualitative researchers

3. A Picture May Tell A Thousand Words But How Many Of Those Words Are Fair And True?

4. Photosynth takes your photos, mashes them together and recreates a 3D scene out of them that anyone can view and move around in. Different than static photos and video, Photosynth allows you to explore details of places, objects, and events unlike any other media. You can’t stop video, move around and zoom in to check out the smallest details, but with Photosynth you can. And you can’t look at a photo gallery and immediately see the spatial relation between the photos, but with Photosynth you can. Description taken from http://photosynth.net/about.aspx What Is ?

5. The idea was originated by Noah Snavelly at the University of Washington (now at Cornell) http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~snavely/ His original Ph.D thesis, ‘Phototourism, exploring photo collections in 3D’ http://phototour.cs.washington.edu/ History of

6. Title of Photosynth Add Digital Photos From A Folder Tags Help Searches Description Which Appear In This Box Who can see it Who can use it Go!

8. Scalable features

9. Matching features across photographs

10. Assembly into 3D spaceHow Does Work?

12. Free software

13. Works with existing equipment : PC, Digital CameraPhotosynth is a relatively ‘lean’ method of achieving something quite sophisticated; it does not require advanced computation skills from the researcher, yet can be used to achieve something quite complex. Why Is Photosynth Interesting To Qualitative Researchers?

15. Contrasting views

16. Various times and dates

17. Dissimilar equipment

18. Individual photographers

19. Varying ‘levels of detail’Photosynth as a method of “triangulating” photographic data. Photosynth allows the creation of a “gestalt” from a diverse range of photographic source data varying in many different metrics of appraisal and marked by dissimilarity

21. To allow the researcher to document and record a given space; providing a model representation using photographic data that is relational or navigable.

22. To recreate a space, where there is a temporal dimension to the use of that space that needs to be documentedPhotosynth for exploration of space

24. Data must be handled by a third party (Microsoft) this needs to be considered when getting ethical approval as the researcher cannot maintain “full” control of data.

25. The data is stored remotely; the “Photosynth” cannot be “downloaded to disk” (but the source files are the record of the data)Limitations of Photosynth(In it’s present implementation)

28. No photograph was taken from this viewpoint – yet Photosynth allows me to explore the point cloud in three dimensional space. From this position, you can clearly see the outline, form and shape of the room.

29. Photosynth data can be mapped onto ‘the world’ by geotagging data. The interface is relatively sophisticated, as it allows data to be ‘scaled’ in relation to satellite imagery and changed in orientation. This results in a fine level of detail regarding the orientation and position of pictures. ....maybe in the future it will be possible to record this information when taking the picture (in part it is) and then mine this information during research analysis? Geospatial Data

40. Assuming a ‘structuralist’ view of visual data. Language is a series of “signs” in which words are only arbitrarily tied to visual data. Sassure (1959) The advantages they confer over a series of pictures is that they allow the ‘linkages’ between photos in a scene to be easily recreated. A photosynth containing hundreds of millions of pixels of picture information can convey a much greater amount of complexity than a picture with a few million pixels. Photosynths Can Help Us Make Sense Of The Structure & Complexity In A Scene

41. Perception proceeds from global analysis to more and more fine-grained analysis The global precedence has a number of possible advantages such as utilization of low-resolution information, economy of processing resources, and disambiguation of indistinct details. Although evidence from the psychological literature supports the notion that global features are extracted earlier and/or better than local ones, in most previous research little attention has been given to the control over the complexity of global and local features. David Navon, (1977) Forest before trees; the precedence of global features in visual perception In: Cognitive Psychology, Volume 9, Issue 3, July 1977, Pages 353-383

42. The Fundamental Diagram of Multilevel Systems Parts aggregate into a whole structure Arch Level N+1 apex assembly relation R R Level N base Jeffrey Johnson, (2006) Hypernetworks for reconstructing the dynamics of multilevel systems In: European Conference on Complex Systems, 25-29 September, Oxford.

44. The structural complexity in a Photosynth is much greater than in a single photograph – which could present challenges and opportunities in data analysis.Level 4 Dining Room Walls Level 3 North Wall Bed Warmer Framed Picture Level 2 Gold Frame Fabric Mountboard Gold Slip Flower Vase Blue Background Leaves Stem Thorns Wooden Handle Brass Warmer Level 1

47. R1 R2 R2 R1 R Relational cones with an intersecting Features assembled to make a face Relational cones with a shared base Image Redrawn from: Jeffrey Johnson, (2006) Hypernetworks for reconstructing the dynamics of multilevel systems In: European Conference on Complex Systems, 25-29 September, Oxford.

49. Photosynth allows us to create a composite view of the world from many photographs taken by others, we can use the ‘social web’ as a source of data... Experiencing the world through other’s eyes...

51. Mode of operation is analogous to the way human beings process data, moving from “big picture” to “finer detail”.

52. Some data / ethics issues in current implementation, although these could be worked on through changing the user interface – the technology is sound.

53. Issues with “crowdsourcing” data from Flickr / Picasa – Privacy / Ethics Issues.Conclusions

55. Development of an application protocol interface, and allowing researchers “under the hood” of Photosynth could yield further insight into processing qualitative visual data.Conclusions

56. Questions please. Thank you for listening!