I worked in the Advanced Technology Group at Apple for ten years. It was the most stimulating and interesting work environment I experienced, full of intelligent and creative people working on interesting projects. By the fall of 1997, the number of people in the department had declined to around 60, down from more than 200 when I started at Apple. At the final Advanced Technology Group picnic, held at a park in Mountain View (Rengstorff ?), not far from Apple HQ at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, I brought my tripod and QuickTake camera and panoramic mount to take a group photo. At the time, most of us were preparing to be laid off as part of a reorganization following Steve Jobs' return as CEO. Eventually, the Advanced Technology Group was eliminated and I moved on to a series of less interesting and less satisfying jobs.
To make this image, I had all the people at the picnic form a circle and I stood in the middle and took a series of 8 overlapping images, then stitched them together using Apple's QuicktimeVR software. That produced an interactive video you could pan around in, but I also created the flattened image shown here. Since the QuickTake was a low resolution, .4 megapixel camera with no manual controls, there is very little detail in the faces of the people in the picture, along with some very dark shadows. I have tried to upscale the image and apply facial recovery software, but the results have not been good, with most faces distorted beyond recognition. If you look closely, you can see that the guy standing close to the middle in a white t-shirt and red sarong appears 3 times in the image. He is also on the right side kneeling on the ground and in the back between those two locations. As I panned my camera, he ran around behind the circle of people and stopped a couple of times to appear with different poses.