Maestro contributor: Thomas K Sharpless

Thomas is a retired software and systems engineer who worked in cancer research, medical imaging, and chip design. He got hooked on panoramic photography in 2004, when he converted a document scanner into a rotating digital slit camera. 

Thomas got into developing open source panography software around 2008. In 2009, he co-rediscovered an 18th century painters’ technique for rendering wide views in a natural-looking perspective and he has been evangelizing it under the name “Panini projection”.  Thomas has developed and published several programs that offer new ways to control wide angle photo and video perspectives under the general name, “Panini”. 

His latest effort is PT3D, a helper program for stitching stereoscopic panoramas with PTGui.  Thomas hopes eventually to develop a true 3D stitching tool that can combine hand-held stereo snapshots into seamless spherical panoramas.Visit Thomas’ profile page  where you can find more than 500 panoramas using different techniques; some of his panoramas are stereoscopic, which look especially great in VR headsets where you can fully enjoy the stereoscopic depth perception.