The Organizers
The World Wide Panorama events and web sites have been organized and created by Don Bain and Landis Bennett. They both participated in the early "Wrinkles" and maintain large web sites of their own panoramic images. Both are current or former members of the IVRPA (International VR Photography Association) Board of Directors. Original graphics by Kat Bennett and Markus Altendorff, newer graphics by Carsten Rees, Chiara Masiero Sgrinzatto, Luca Vascon and Aleksandar Janicijevic. Maps, database, and programming by Markus Altendorff. More programming by Erik Krause. Thomas Rauscher, Keeper of the Coordinates.
G. Donald Bain
In real life I manage the Geography Computing Facility at the University of California Berkeley, where I also teach cartography and field studies. The rest of the time I travel and take panoramas for my web site: Don Bain's Virtual Guidebooks. This project (my wife refers to it as my obsession) has taken me from Tahiti to the Arctic, from the prehistoric ruins of the Southwest to the glaciers of the Canadian Rockies. As a compulsive educator it has been a real treat, documenting and sharing my landscapes with the world. I have taken countless panoramas, with about 13000 currently on the site (http://360panos.com/).
Landis Bennett
I met Don when I attended the University of California Berkeley as a geography major. Fortuitously I started there at just about the same time QTVR reared its head. Don was just learning all about it and because we both share a great love of travel and photography he introduced me to his new enthusiasm. I took it from there and did a bit of my own traveling. I have about 1000 panoramas from all over North America on my website and many, many more that have yet to be put on the web - if only for a little more time. When not making panoramas of my travels, I'm making maps both self-published and for hire. My site can be found at http://www.360Geographics.com.
Kat Bennett
Kat created the logos and regional graphics for this web site. She is a professional cartographer with Avalon Travel Publishing. Another graduate of the geography department at U.C. Berkeley, she has been on panographic expeditions north past the Arctic Circle and south of the Tropic of Cancer.
Boštjan Burger
Boštjan Burger is a Slovenian informatician, geographer, panoramic and VR panoramic photographer, and speleologist. He started to use the (flat) panoramic images in 1993 with his project City View ( https://www.burger.si/CityView.html ) but regarding using the immersive 360° panoramas for documenting the landscape, he was greatly influenced by geographer Don Bain.
He met Don in 1998 when working with the World Waterfalls database, and in 2000 there was the idea to re-start the "hub" of panoramas all over the world. The idea of starting the project was realized in March 2004. He was a member of the Board of Directors of WWP and ran, managed, and promoted the WWP until 2019.
Markus Altendorff
I'm into panoramic photography as a hobby since 1997, and also took part as a contributor in some of the early Wrinkle in Time events. My involvement with the WWP was more of a lucky accident, caused by an email from Landis Bennett after I presented a pretty rough draft of a clickable world map for the 9/04 event to our WWP Yahoo Group.
Markus created the striking new world and detail maps for the 9/04 event and ran the whole WWP as a one man show until 2018.
Thomas Rauscher
I am very new to panoramic photography and this hobby started with the 2004 Sanctuary Event. My other passion is programming and as it turns out, this is a perfect match. I did several extensions for PanoTools and I have written Windows software for QuicktimeVR called Pano2VR. Like Markus, my involvement started with a post on the WWP Yahoo Group about my first tests of Placemarks for Google Earth and NASA Worldwind.
Pat Swovelin †
His e-mail footer said it all:
"World Wide Panorama Event Coordinator
Get out there an shoot some panoramas!"
Pat has maintained the events, proof-reading the individual contributions and providing assistance to the participants for years. He passed away unexpectedly on May 21st, 2012. The June 2012 event, “Heritage”, is dedicated to him.
-- The WWP team
Erik Krause, Carsten Rees, Keith Martin, Kathy Wheeler, Luca Vascon and Robert Bilsland took over as the new WWP management team in 2019.
Erik Krause
started with panoramic photography in 1999 and is an active member of the panoramic community since then. He rescued the WWP when the page was down and does the programming since.
Klaus Reinfeld
Klaus, the manufacturer of krpano, generously donated version 1.20 for the WPP site. Without Krpano it would not have been possible to display the old QTVR contributions.
Many thanks!
Martin Geier
Martin is a professional graphic artist. He was kind enough to provide the new layout voluntarily.
Many thanks!
Aleksandar Janicijevic
provided the new opener image.
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