From Video Tapes To Volumetric Capture

My career has often included electronics, computers, photography and video. I have used almost every digital camera technology — from the 80’s with VHS to Hi8, MiniDV, DVcam, Digi beta to today’s SSD-based cinema cameras. I hold no academic certificates in any of these fields, but my hands on experience with photography, video editing, and other digital production hacks in audio and lighting have served me well over four decades.

Influences In Stone, History & Geniuses

My hometown, Edinburgh has stunning examples of old buildings, cathedrals, monuments and volcanoes. These influences in geology, architecture and the history about their builders and occupants have been the focus for my storytelling, personal photography and early tape based video work. They all have details that perplex and mystify about the geniuses behind them.

Thanks to the smartphone in my pocket I now have 3D copies of a few of them to explore up close and use in my own type of art with them.

Creating 3D with a mobile phone made the scanning technique of photogrammetry simpler due to the technology (IMU and accelerometer) in smartphones supplying accurate information to the algorithm that calculates the completed 3D object. This heavy lifting in processing means it is just a case of keeping video movement steady and photographs sharp while circling an object. Most of the leading 3D scanning apps have a cloud based rendering service that you upload to and I voluntarily beta tested many of these for the developers from 2020 to the present.

Also, home in Scotland I was supplying businesses with 360 images for Street Views (2016-2019) and today in 2026, 3D processing uses the same 360 cameras to create immaculate 3D clones of streets and cities.

All of these techniques (and fairly inexpensive equipment) naturally led me into 3D scanning and sharing my results daily through my socials. These frequent posts led to collaborations with companies including Shutterstock and the creators of Pokémon GO, (Niantic) as well as producing tutorials, talks , blogs and industry interviews.

When I’m not scanning, I’m usually walking or fly-fishing.