How Photosynth is Changing Photography

Microsoft’s Photosynth technology originally debuted two years ago, but it continues to impress us with its implications for photography in user generated digital environments.  When the developer, Aguera y Arcas, spoke to the crowd at the 2007 TED conference, he described the Photosynth project as taking “data from the entire collective memory of what the earth looks like…All of those photos become linked together, and they make something emergent—greater than the sum of their parts.”

Photosynth technology was recently seen implemented on a massive scale during the inauguration, when CNN asked viewers to contribute their own photos to create an enormous composite – the result capturing a bit of the enormity of the moment. You can see CNNs coverage through Photosynth of “The Moment” when Obama was officially sworn in here.

Slate Magazine offers a nice explanation of the impact of Photosynth:

The genius of Photosynth is that it takes advantage of the psychosis of digital photography. The software collects similar pictures that, by themselves, aren’t very interesting and builds an entirely new kind of image, what you might call a social photograph. Ordinary photos show you an event as one person captured it. A synth is a scene as seen by everyone. Look at this synth assembled by CNN, titled “The Moment.” The network asked people to send in their snapshots of the moment Obama held up his hand and took the oath. There are now nearly 700 pictures in the synth, and together they give you an incredibly detailed picture of what took place that morning. It’s not just one person’s view—you can see the event as people in every part of the crowd saw it. There are sharp photos from CNN’s professional photographers and blurry pictures from people using cell-phone cams, all shot from every conceivable angle around Obama—his left and right, below him, even behind him. Looking at the synth is even better than having been there live—this way you see everything.

Photosynth represents a powerful collaborative tool that has redefined a user’s experience with the landscape of digital photography.  As someone who was able to experience the inauguration firsthand, we can’t say the synth is in any way superior to the real thing, but the software definitely pushes the boundaries of the impact of once static, limited images. Photosynth runs best on PC systems, but the most recent version of Silverlight enables it on Macs; you can see the company’s own collection of “synths” here.

[via Slate]