Thoughts on the Total Photo

I want to spend a little time explaining the total photo as it seems like this type of photograph is now of more interest to the world than it was when I invented it. I receive a patent, number 4,214,821, on the total photograph in July of 1980. This shows the abstract below.





The Total Photo is a spherical photograph displayed on the outside surface of all the Platonic Solids or Regular polyhedra. It does with photography what my spherical Termespheres do with paint. It captures the up, down and all around environment from one point in space. In the beginning I explored all five of the regular polyhedron, the tetrahedron(1), hexahedron(2), octahedron(3), dodecahedron(4), icosahedron(5). I also explored the pop up polyhedron. I found with my Superwide Hasselblad camera the dodecahedron worked the best.

It would look more normal if you were inside the polyhedron and let it be an environment around you. I have taken pictures of many famous interiors around the world. Some of these have helped me to paint spherical paintings of these environments.



Taking pictures of one of my Termesphere paintings was what inspired me to figure out the total photo. I wanted to take pictures all around a spherical painting so it could be put together on the flat surface. I learned very quickly if the photo were to be put back together in some kind of orderly way, it had to be photographed in some geometric way. I knew about the different polyhedra that fit on the sphere. I drew the icosahedon onto the surface of a painting with erasable ink. I set my camera and tripod up so I could shoot straight into each of the triangles. This was done by turning the sphere in a cylinder until the center of each triangle was in the center of the lens. The result turned out very well but I learned the triangles were bulging out triangles rather than straight line triangles. This was a problem as I had to either cut off part of the image or have a black pattern between each triangle. I ended up with dark patterns between the triangles. This wasn't as smooth as I was hoping but it opened my mind to painting on polyhedra and taking on the concept of the total photo. The total photo has become a great tool for me for doing the famous interior Termespheres. I believe this total photo concept has transformed into what is now called virtual panoramic photos.