The Photogenic Fechins

Nicolai Fechin Self-Portrait

Nicolai Fechin was a Russian-American painter who lived in Taos, New Mexico from 1927 to 1933. This week, Terri and I visited the house that he built for his family and were very impressed by the adobe architecture, the hand carved woodwork and the beautiful portraits that Nicolai painted of his wife and daughter.

Alexandra Fechin by Nicolai Fechin

Nicolai was born in Russia in 1881 and studied at the Kazan Art School in St. Petersburg. He married Alexandra, the daughter of the school's director in 1913. Their daughter Eya was born the following year and after the divorce of her parents in 1933, she moved with her father to New York, then Santa Monica.

Eya was a frequent model for her father and played a critical role in the preservation of the Fechin House in Taos.

Eya Fechin by Nicolai Fechin

While visiting the Fechin House, I couldn't resist capturing a Photo Sphere of the Garden. You can take a look here.

The Garden of The Fechin House in 360

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The Fechin is Fetching in 360

The Fechin House and Taos Art Museum

The Fechin House in Taos, New Mexico seemed the perfect place to test Google's new Photo Sphere app for iOS. The new iPhone app lets you capture a 360 degree view of any location by capturing a series of images in all directions.

The Photo Sphere app leads you step by step through the process of creating the sphere by showing you a series of orange dots that indicate each view you should capture.  In addition to shooting in all directions on a single plane, the app also has you capture images pointing up and pointing down to create a complete spherical view from your current location. The hardest part about using the app is standing in exactly the same place, without falling, while turning in circles to capture each of the views.

The Fechin House in 360 Degrees.

After your sphere is captured, the software requires a few minutes to stitch the images together to compute the sphere. You then have the option to upload the image to Google Plus where it can be shared and evaluated by Google to be shown on Google Earth.

The 360 degree images are more interesting than attractive when viewed in a two dimensional plane. They are both fun and attractive when viewed through the Google Panoramic Viewer. Click here to see this sphere of The Fechin House.

The Photo Sphere app is fun and as it gains more and more users, it will be a tremendous supplement to the increasingly complete view of the earth provided by Google Earth.

Where do you want to capture 360?

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