I work as a volunteer with Staffordshire Wildlife Trust on their major project ‘Transforming the Trent Valley‘ (TTTV). My role is that of both a photographer and a ‘virtual tour’ creator. I enjoy this type of work because it is ‘photography with a purpose‘ – not just taking photographs that are constrained by the narrow ideas of what judges think is ‘good’.
For the photography, I mostly take landscapes and panoramic views – these are different to the artistic type of photos seen in competitions and magazines; they have to show where you can go and what you can see at the different locations in the scheme area. These are used for virtual tours and their galleries (which also includes photographs taken by other photography volunteers).
For the virtual tours I am creating two different types of tour: 1) Interactive Tours where the user can interact with the website, jumping to different locations, viewing different galleries, reading information that is presented. and 2) Virtual Walks where a series of still images and panoramic views are presented in a video taking you through a landscape but giving you time to take in the scenes.
In addition, I have created before-after (or then and now) types of images. I can present these either as intereactive ‘slider’ type items on a web page, or as videos that show the transitions.
Here are some examples:
Here is a link to the first tour (this will open the TTTV website in a new tab): Tucklesholme Nature Reserve. I have created this tour, provided the main tour images, and some of the photo gallery images. Below is a smaller version of the pilot tour that uses just my images – the live version on the TTTV website has a better layout and more images.
Below is the circular video walk at Branston Leas Nature Reserve (this version is ‘unbranded’ on my hosting). The full TTTV version can be seen on their Youtube channel (this opens in a new tab):
And this one, also at Branston Leas, is a return walk along the River Trent to the WW2 pill box. The ‘branded’ TTTV version can be seen on their Youtube channel:
Here is a short example of a ‘then-and-now’ type of presentation for the project presented as a video. If you prefer you can view it on my Youtube channel:
Disclosure: I came to be a volunteer on this project as one of my daughters is the project manager. She started off wanting help to get a short introductory video created and things went on from there…