GigaPans

My apologies to those whose knowledge of the fierce territoriality of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds might make the above scene a perplexing distortion of reality. Rarely will the local male allow birds others than his mate to use a food source in his territory, so a feeding flock like this is impossible, and has a biological spookiness to it, like cloned pets. In a sense, the distorted reality is due only to the integration over time that is a feature of all gigapan panoramas. It’s just highli...

Pine-Oak-Heath-Sandplain Forest at Camp Johnson -- Forests like this are common south of Vermont, but restricted to a few locations within the state (see http://gigapan.org/gigapans/34970/ for another location). The distinguishing feature is the presence of pitch pine (Pinus rigida) which is near the northern limit of its range here. This forest type occurs only on sandy plains which were created when sediment laden rivers built huge deltas into a post-glacial lake or estuary about 13,400 yea...

May 13, 2011 was the celebration of Coach Graham's milestone victory recorded when the Owls beat the Houston Courgars on May 6th.

The Owls continue on the road to Omaha by hosting the NCAA Houston Regional beginning June 3, and if they win the regional, they are then host to the Super Regional a week later, and if they win the Super Regional, the final stop of the 2011 campaign is the College World Series, which the Owls won in 2003.

But the 13th belonged to Coach Wayne Graham as Reck...

As the Laurentide glacier retreated from the Champlain Valley 13,600 years ago, the ice damned the valley and Glacial Lake Vermont rose to about 170 m (550 feet) above sea level, which is the elevation of the camera. This sand and gravel was carried by an ice-marginal river that built kame terraces until it reached the lake where it dumped fine sediments into the standing water forming a delta more than 4 km long.

This quarry is the source of material that is spread on snow-covered roads in ...

Pine-Oak-Heath-Sandplain Forest, Salisbury, Vermont -- Due to the presence of pitch pine, this is one of the rarest forest communities in Vermont, known only from the deltaic sandplains of Colchester (http://gigapan.org/gigapans/30324/) and this stand in the Salisbury Town Forest. The parent material for the droughty, acid soils is a 13,600 year old deposit of sand and gravel that is about 20 m deep here (an exposure of the deltaic strata under this surface can be seen here: http://gigapan.org/...

The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is an oceanfront amusement park in Santa Cruz, California. Founded in 1907 it is California's oldest surviving amusement park and one of two seaside parks on the West Coast of the United States (the other being the Santa Monica Pier).

The eastern end of the boardwalk is dominated by the Giant Dipper roller coaster, one of the best-known wooden coasters in the world and one of the most visible landmarks in Santa Cruz. The Dipper and the Looff Carousel, whic...

There are several dozen examples of this forest community in Vermont, most of them less than a few hectares in size. This is the most recently discovered example. The community is distinguished by the presence of pitch pine, which reaches its northern range limit in Vermont, and occurs in only three community types in the state, all of them rare. There are about 30 pitch pines, 30 red pines, and 100-200 white pines on this 1 ha outcrop of Cheshire quartzite. Chestnut oak, red oak, white oak,...

Mesic Red Oak-Northern Hardwood Forest, Salisbury, Vermont -- This well-drained kame terrace in the Salisbury Town Forest supports a dry example of this forest type with three oak species. The forest community is distinguished by the absence of sugar maple, an important component of hardwood forests on less droughty sites. It includes red oak, white oak, and chestnut oak, and I think at least one black oak (I have yet to get my hands on a leaf or acorn from it).

This gigapan can be viewed i...

San Francisco Aquatic Park taken from Muni Pier.

I used a Nikon D700 with a 400mm f/5.6 lens shot with a Gigapan Epic 100 (yes, the 100 and not the Pro).

I restitched this Gigapan and it can be found here http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/60723/