Category Archives: IVRPA Conference Speakers:

Las Vegas 2014 Speakers

IVRPA Conference Speakers:

Willy Kaemena

Willy Kaemena is a retired mechanical engineer who worked over 30 years in many countries of the world.

His private passion are panoramas and he did first panoramas already 1965 with black and white photos which he glued together.
Fueled by the development of QTVR he bought his first digital camera in 1997 and the first digital photos were immediately put together and an interactive QTVR was created.

The next level was the “miracle” of full spheric panoramas, introduced with the development of Quicktime 5 in 2000.
It took him 3 years to unveil this miracle and to produce his first sphericals of doubtful quality using a tiny Olympus Fisheye strapped on an Olympus 2.1 Mpix point and shoot digital cam.

With the appearance of stitching software with a GUI and the availability of affordable digital SRLs and 8mm fisheye lenses, back in 2004, he could finally reached an output quality which still can be used today. In the last 10 years of his professional career he used interactive panoramas extensively on his job in order to transmit a real impression on the progress of his oversea projects back to the head office of his company.

He was one of the early photographer of 360cities, the largest panorama website of the world, where he published already more than 1500 panoramas, shot in many countries of the world.

He is well known by his special passion, which is traveling by train and documenting the interiors of famous trains as 360 panoramas and virtual tours. He is also the father of the Flying Willy which he will demonstrates on the field.

Currently he acts as secretary of the IVRPA

IVRPA Conference Speakers:

Evan Rapoport

Evan Rapoport is a Product Manager for Google Maps Street View and community photography products such as Photo Sphere, Views, and Panoramio. He loves pushing the limits of what smart phone cameras can do, and creating products that empower people to share their stories through pictures and maps.

Before joining Google in 2011, he lived in Hawaii for eight years where he worked in high tech. His previous projects include storytelling platforms for outdoor adventurers, K-12 educational tools for oceanography and environmental stewardship, and brain-computer interfaces for severely disabled people.

He has authored or co-authored several peer-reviewed journal articles and two book chapters on functional brain imaging. His previous research at the University of Virginia and Carnegie Mellon included topics in human visual perception, often using virtual reality headsets or large immersive displays to better understand how people perceive and interact with the world around them.

Evan also loves hiking, stand-up paddling, and the ocean.

Evan Rapoport was born in Suffern, New York and currently live in Los Altos, California.

As you can imagine, Evan works at Google

IVRPA Conference Speakers:

Manuel Cabral

Manuel Cabral studied Network Engineering and has a Master’s degree on the subject from Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon. During his studies he made a stay in Stockholm for Erasmus at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH).
After that he made a one year internship at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands, where he worked on payload data compression.
In 2011 he founded Digisfera with his father António Cabral, who is a photographer. The company specializes on panoramic photography and, internationally, focuses on providing design and software development services to professionals.
IVRPA Conference Speakers:

Michael Franz

Michael’s photography experience includes magazine editorial photography, commercial construction photography, portraits, landscapes, fine art and gigapixel photography.

As an expert in shooting gigapixel panoramas using GigaPan technology, Michael captures hundreds of thousands of images and combines them into a single, high-resolution image to explore and share.

During his career at GigaPan, Michael has conducted seminars and workshops, trained top photographers, and developed tutorial videos and webinars.

To this day, Michael still carries his camera everywhere, prepared to capture the next great shot.

IVRPA Conference Speakers:

Gavin Farrell

  • Shooting panoramas since 2005
  • Senior Designer Manager of the Yahoo! Creative Solutions team, 7 years.
  • Served on the International Association of Panoramic Photographers IAPP board.
  • IVRPA Officer
  • Active member of the Gigapan Systems Advisory board
  • BETA-tester for: Nodal Ninja, Promote-Systems, and Bushman-panoramic.
  • Founder & host of ongoing webcast: The Panographers – www.panogs.com
  • Partnered with Joergen Geerds, in the creation of xRez Studio’s (& team): Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project, 2008.
  • Publications:Featured on page 468 of the Christian Bloch’s HDRI handbook 2.0.
  • Publications:Panographer (along with Canon “Explorer of Light” Clint Clemens) for upcoming (Dec2015) Tachen coffee-table book of Murals of Tibet – Gigapixel Panoramas of an Ancient Culture.
  • Public Installations: (Interior sliding conference room walls mount/gigapixel print, Hotel MAYA, Long Beach, CA,
  • Public Installations:(exterior)Massive Interpretive “Panorama” signs throughout the Mount St Helen’s National Monument, WA 2009
  • *Public Exhibitions: Seattle Symphony Orchestra played to my panoramic projections for the 3 hour orchestration of : “An American Symphony”, Benayora Hall, Seattle WA

Education: BFA, Rhode Island School of Design and Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood.

Funny fact: Hollywood actor Charlie Sheen purchased one of his prints at an art opening in Venice Beach, CA.