GDonaldBain

I have always used photographs of landscapes in teaching geography and environmental sciences. This led me to create The Geo-Images Project in 1991, one of the earliest web sites (1994), and perhaps the first site to feature color imagery.

When I first saw Apple's QTVR, I recognized it as a significant advance in portraying landscapes. I built a special camera mount and started making VR panoramas in 1995, eventually presenting them on my website: Don Bain's Virtual Guidebooks. My goal is to portray the landscapes of western North America, in pursuit of which I have travelled from the tip of Baja California in Mexico to the Arctic Ocean in Canada, creating over 7000 panoramas.

I served on the IVRPA (IQTVRA) board from 2004 to 2007 and again beginning in 2009. My goal is for the IVRPA to become the unifying organization for VR producers and a resource for everyone interested in VR photography.

In 2004 Landis Bennett and I founded the World Wide Panorama with the aim of bringing VR photography to the attention of a wider audience, and promoting a sense of community among the participants. It is now administered by the World Wide Panorama Foundation.

In June 2007 I helped organize and host the International VR Photography Conference in Berkeley, California.

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended the University of California at Berkeley and University College London in England. From 1986 to 2008 I was the Director of the Geography Computing Facility, University of California Berkeley, where I taught computer cartography and field studies. I live in El Cerrito, on the crest of the Berkeley Hills, with my wife Dr Nora Weldon and two cats.