art - How to do 360 Polar Panorama in Photography?

I Have here a 360 Panorama picture from random Web search:

I want to ask how to do this, do I need some special lens or any equipment to do this? It's kind a tricky I guess.

Answer

Some links to tutorials help you get started:

Digitial Camera world Photoshop tutorial

Photo extremist tutorial

Photojojo tutorial

This is entirely a product of post processing and stitching multiple exposures together. Not the by-product of some interesting lens. You will need a tripod and the right software (photoshop/some other plugins assist (see articles))

Hope that helps!