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http://GigapanMagazine.org vol 1 issue 2
Here is a panorama of the Amundsen Scott South Pole Station on the evening of December 31, 2008. The snowy landscape around the Pole is fairly quiet, as almost everyone is getting ready for the New Year’s Eve party in the gymnasium of the elevated station. We have not yet taken apart our Christmas tree, and the 2008 Pole marker remains in the snow where it was placed on January 1 of last year. Tomorrow during a 1pm ceremony, the Geographic Pole marker will change to its 2009 version, which was designed and made by the 2008 overwinter crew. The new marker will be set onto a post in a new hole in the ice that is located about 30 feet closer to the Dome. The American Flag and the sign with its brief written accounts of Amundsen's and Scott's arrival at the Pole will move along with it. The South Pole Station is situated on top of the largest sheet of ice on Planet Earth. The elevated station, the Dome, and everything else that you see here drift a little bit toward grid northwest each day. Once each year the location of the Geographic Pole is officially corrected to place it once again over the axis of rotation of the planet. In 2008, we use GPS to confirm the location of the Pole. All of this constant, predictable glacial motion and the annual marker movement create an interesting pastime for the crew and visitors to the station, especially for the folks who brought their own GPS’s to the Pole. In the summer of 1911-12, Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott had a much more difficult time confirming that they and their parties had in fact arrived at 90 degrees south latitude. On the left of the image you see the ice-carving efforts of some of the station crew. They have been working on these giant blocks for several weeks, and their art will be judged on January 4. The ambient temperature, which has now risen to approach 0 degrees Fahrenheit, makes ice carving a comfortable exercise, as long as the wind is fairly calm. It looks like they had some great ideas and that they have been busy at their task. Which carving would earn your vote? The 30 images of this panorama were photographed with a Nikon D 80 and stitched with Autopano Pro. Please enjoy The South Pole on New Year's Eve 2008. |
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First shot i've taken that I feel was worth the extra time to photoshop and make perfect, including everything from the Mercedes Benz shoot to the cars stopped in traffic on the West Side Highway. Also what I think is the first shot taken at this resolution of the new Highline Park that's just opened. Definitely the most time i've ever spent working on a single picture...pretty good view from here. Printing as big as I can as well. enjoy! |
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Sunday Oct. 4th 2009 http://www.balloonfiesta.com/
The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is considered to be the most photographed event in the world. If you zoom in on the crowd you will see a lot of those photographs being taken. |
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From the pier on Coney Island, July 4th.
1 row of verticals with 300mm f/4 lens, stitched with AutoPano Giga |
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Taken 7 Km out of Sassari, that's visible at the horizon. |
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Near the state line of Massachusetts and Vermont.
If drawing a line from the center of top edge to the center of right side, the triangle of top right corner (about 1/8 of the photo) is in Vermont, the rest is in Massachusetts. |
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This gigapan was taken from the top of Mount Victoria, a very popular park and lookout |
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This is a redo of a previous gigapan, as I found more images that belonged. A few notes on how this was done, and why there are some funky edges on 7x7 image. Kit: Epic 100, Olympus E510, 40-150 lens, 150mm (35mm: 300mm) No tripods are allowed on the Observatory Deck of the Empire State Building, both as a safety requirement and to cut down on photographers heading up there with their view cameras or gigapans on a nice day and hogging all the good corners. :-) This means that you can't use a gigapan, since it is not something that you can hand-hold. Being the ornery person I am, I searched for an alternative. I got around this by using a monopod with base feet, a Manfrotto unit that I had picked up years and years ago and only recently discovered actually had the feet, which are nothing more than steel rods, threaded to fit into screwed sockets at the base to provide a modicum of support. I wrote the corporation that runs the Empire State Building if this was acceptable, but received no answer, so when I was recently in New York, I simply went there. I passed through security with no problem, with the head of security commenting that a monopod was allowable. I then set up the Epic 100 at the top of the Empire State Building on the monopod. While the unit is impressively stable compared to not having base feet at all, it does sway quite a bit if left to its own devices. Hence I made sure to brace the monopod as well as I could, trying to keep the balance centered on the unit, but found that I need a lot more practice to get this down right. Hence I stopped the first one I did (and erased it from the card) and upped the FOV so that I would get a fair amount of overlap to compensate for the swaying of the gigapan, which does generate a fair amount of torque when tranversing rows or columns. So, that's the secret of how to do a gigapan where no tripods are allowed: use something that isn't a tripod, but pretends to be. I am still curious about the lighting on this and the others: the overall balance of the colors looks almost like a tobacco color, which was definitely not the coloration I remember from that day. Will have to see if I can take a closer look at what is driving that coloration... |
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New York City from Port Imperial (Weehawkin, NJ), approximately 2:45pm, November 28th, 2008. |
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Jackson Square is viewed from the podium near the Mississippi River levee. This is one of the grandest plazas in the USA, due in part to the influence of the Spanish and French colonists who took turns ruling Louisiana as a colony --- until Napoleon sold it to the USA through the efforts of Thomas Jefferson in 1803. Napoleon needed the money to finance his European campaigns and Jefferson wanted the young nation to expand into the territories secured by his Louisiana Purchase. Here, in Jackson Square, the transfer of governments was carried out amidst much pomp and fanfare. It wasn't until 1814, when General Andrew Jackson saved the city (along with local help from the pirate Jean LaFitte) from the invading British that the square was named in his honour. Later, the equestrian statue of Jackson was made to adorn the centre of the plaza. Symmetrically, on either side of the French-styled St. Louis Cathedral are the Cabildo buildings, built to house the Spanish colonial government when Spain ruled the colony. They now form part of the Louisiana Museum complex. Again, symmetrically, on the sides of the plaza are the two Pontalba apartments, which even today are luxurious apartments for the rich and famous. The alleys between the Pontalba apartments are frequented today by artists, street performers and fortune-tellers, and in the space between the Cathedral and the Square one is certain to hear the wonderful sounds of Dixieland Jazz all year round. |