Garden from the Decking

Picture was composed by mounting a basic digital camera on a monopod. I rested the monopod in a Parasol stand. And kept repeated taking pictures whilst slowly turning the camera clockwise (about 14 pics per rotation) I started with the camera pointing straight down and after each rotation tilted the camera up a little. I continued doing this until the camera was aiming almost straight up. I now had about 190 pictures taken from to same spot covering a 360 view from floor to ceiling. Having uploaded the picture to my PC I then installed MICROSOFT SILVERLIGHT, a free piece of software that stiches these picures together to make a 360 panoramic picture. The MICROSOFT SILVERLIGHT software then enables you to upload directly to photosynth. The composition and conversion of your photos does take quite a while (about an hour) but as this was only my third attempt I was quite pleased with the result.
Key Points: take pictures that overlap, rotate camera on a monopod/tripod, face camera to the floor and then pan slowly upwards afer each rotation of taking pictures. Upload pictures into free Microsoft silverlight software. convert to to photosynth.