Panorama vs. virtual tour
When a professional photographer produces a virtual tour, photos are stitched together to form a series of concave images that when viewed in virtual tour form, consumers can see what a room looks like from all 360 degrees by virtually spinning with their mouse or keyboard. What we are noticing is that some real estate photographers are doing high quality work with virtual tours then showing the images in flat form as a panoramic picture not as a landing photo in the MLS or on a website, but almost as artistic novelty.
Some real estate photographers have mastered city panoramics or panoramic views from inside of a listing, but it is interesting to see the fine line blurred between virtual tour format and the concave photo pairings of a series of listings images that almost tricks the eye.
Above and below are the work of California real estate photographer Chad Jones at GoldCoastRealTours.com and in addition to being fantastic virtual tours would be really interesting art for a homeowner’s wall (the buyer’s) or the listing agent’s walls.
Tara Steele is the News Director at The American Genius, covering entrepreneur, real estate, technology news and everything in between. If you'd like to reach Tara with a question, comment, press release or hot news tip, simply click the link below.

Lucas
August 29, 2011 at 10:08 am
I'm a photographer and have been working on a art project of 360 panoramic photos of artists studios for the past 5 years. These are the same type of panos made for houses and real estate but they are Artists studios. My personal feeling is the pano photo displayed flat, instead of as a Virtual tour is more effective in allowing the viewer to understand the layout of the room. Anyway, feel free to take a look at some of the almost 100 studios I've photographed at TheStudioTourProject.com
Birender Saini
August 29, 2011 at 1:49 pm
Hi, Thanks for the post and amazing photos. There is no doubt that you are very good at this. Will you please share your experience about whether users prefer a panoramic picture more or the video covering the same area? I personally think Panoramic images provide a good view but do not know if an agent can create those type of images easily..Let me know what you think.