a Photo Blog, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to dear dirty New York
Edinburgh, Scotland
The National Museum of Scotland has a roof garden with tremendous views. Above an in camera sweep panorama that covers only about 180º of the view. Below, a series of shots that will show some of the views a little closer. Click on any of them to see them larger.
At the summit of Arthur’s Seat I shot an in camera panoramic jpeg. Impossible not to include some of the hordes of tourists who had preceded us up the hill, laying waste to the grasses and other flora along the way. Tremendous views, though. Click on the pictures below to see them larger (you may have to click the post title first if you’re seeing this in email or social).
Here are examples of those de rigeur snaps one feels one has to take but that you can easily buy better postcard versions of or look up in a guide book. Needless to say, my casual travel zoom (16-55mm or 24-83 equivalent) was not up to the 360º challenge, nor was I carrying a tripod or a gimbal. The first picture uses the panoramic sweep feature of my camera to get about 180º. Even trying to fix the perspective in post proved quite a challenge on several of these. The Grand-Place, or Grote Markt, as the Flemish call it is a magnificent, historical square that has been a UNESCO world heritage site for the last 25 years. Read all about it on Wikipedia. Click any of the pictures above to see them all at full-size (if you’re seeing this in an email you may need to click the post title above to get to the web-site first.)
Note the extremely clear Mediterranean or Caribbean waters. The kayaker in Stair Hole climbed up and hung from the top of the hole, then we progressed onward to Lulworth Cove (last 2 pictures – click any of them to see them all enlarged with captions). And see the panorama below…
I created the panorama below by stitching together 14 individual handheld shots, sweeping across the horizon. For those interested in technical details, Photoshop stitched them together, evening out changes in sky tone and filling in gaps at top and bottom like a Mercator map projection. The file is 11.5 feet wide and 17″ tall at 300 dpi! Photoshop saved it as a psb file as it wouldn’t fit in the standard .psd format and it was over 4GB. To save space I flattened the image and saved it as a TIFF but it’s still about 1.4GB. You can’t see it here, but opening it up in Photoshop you can zoom in and traverse it like an interactive gaming space. I shot several series like this over the course of the 2 week trip but the files are frankly too large to do this for every set so I’m not sure I’ll bother just for a pretty landscape.
Continuing, we came to the Dane John Mound, top which sits the Dane John monument and from where you can look out at the gardens and across Canterbury to the cathedral. Click any image to see them all full-size.
This is an in-camera stitched panorama on the same walk as I’ve been showing for the last several posts.
The skyline of the City and the Square Mile has changed since my last visit.
The next morning, after another hearty breakfast, a taxi took our bags onward to our hotel in Keswick and deposited us in the town center. From there we hiked up to Wall Crag, at an elevation of over 375 meters, for even more stunning views including of the Derwent Water.
Click any individual image to see each one enlarged to full size.
Back in the Financial District office after a 2 year absence…
Fair warning: I find these views on the turnpike fascinating. They draw me with the beauty of their industrial ugliness, the strict geometry of the Manhattan skyline and the pylons and other industrial artifacts. So expect to see several more over the next few posts…
An annual ritual is going dow to the bay to see a beautiful sunset.
Getting close to leaving Seattle.
Instead of paying close to $30 to go up the Space Needle, we climbed the spiral staircase in this water tower in Seattle’s Volunteer Park (designed by the firm of the sons of Frederick Law Olmstead, of Central Park fame.
