Piece of Cake

Editing my 36o RICOH THETA photos in Photoshop was pretty simple, seeing that only a couple of them needed minor adjustments with lighting — the photos were already such amazing quality. It’s also important for audiences to really feel like they were there and not an overly-saturated or filtered version of the location which is, ironically, how these trendy places are portrayed most of the time through Instagram. I want for my viewers to get as authentic as an experience their screens can provide.

Putting hotspots on a photo was a breeze, thanks to Thinglink. All you do is upload — click the “upload panoramic image 360” — and then click where you want the images, audio and text placed. It’s as simple as that. But you’ll have to mess around with cropping the photos you want onto your 360 before uploading it onto Thinglink. Mainly in the editing stage, what you need is time. Lots and lots of it. Even if putting it all together isn’t necessarily difficult, the smallest adjustment can become time-consuming.

Lastly, interviews. I’ve had people send me their social media photos at the Pink Wall, Alfred’s, or wherever it may be, and asked them to share with me their experiences being there and how they found themselves at the Instagrammable hot spots in the first place. Best practices for interviews: always, always make sure to get the proper spelling of their name and leave ample time for transcribing and picking out the best bits and pieces. To get my audio pieces onto Thinglink, I edited them through Adobe Premiere Pro and then rendered them from mp4s into mp3s on a free online converter.

I’m hoping to get the rest of my interviews and learn to embed outside sources and links to my hotspots, whether the websites of the locations or fun and relatable articles to check out.

Can’t wait for the final product — we’re one post away!