This post is a continuation of Aerial Panoramas 1. These are more pictures taken out of plane windows. I'm going to use the same introduction to this post because I am lazy.

If the lighting is good and the window isn't too scratched up, you can take pretty good pictures out of a plane window. I'm sure someone else has done this but I've never seen images out the windows of airplanes stitched into panoramas. Here are a few that I've taken. I'll probably post up most of the others tomorrow. While planes are traveling at a few hundred mph, the distances to objects are enough that you can still take your time when snapping the pictures to stitch together. The exception to that rule is right around takeoff or landing. One of the pictures here is flying over Sacramento around sunrise and you can see that the panorama is distorted. I waited too long between pictures...

Just click on the pictures to see slightly larger versions.

Over Sacramento












On the image below the plane was low to the ground so I wasn't taking pictures fast enough.











This is over the Great Salt Lake. The reddish color is supposedly due to unicellular organisms that live in the salty water.

This is a continuation of Aerial Panoramas 1. These are different pictures taken out of plane windows while flying.

Here is the same introduction because I am lazy.

If the lighting is good and the window isn't too scratched up, you can take pretty good pictures out of a plane window. I'm sure someone else has done this but I've never seen images out the windows of airplanes stitched into panoramas. Here are a few that I've taken. I'll probably post up most of the others tomorrow. While planes are traveling at a few hundred mph, the distances to objects are enough that you can still take your time when snapping the pictures to stitch together. The exception to that rule is right around takeoff or landing. One of the pictures here is flying over Sacramento around sunrise and you can see that the panorama is distorted. I waited too long between pictures...

Just click on the pictures to see slightly larger versions (Full Screen).

If the lighting is good and the window isn't too scratched up, you can take pretty good pictures out of a plane window. I'm sure someone else has done this but I've never seen images out the windows of airplanes stitched into panoramas. Here are a few that I've taken. I'll probably post up most of the others tomorrow. While planes are traveling at a few hundred mph, the distances to objects are enough that you can still take your time when snapping the pictures to stitch together. The exception to that rule is right around takeoff or landing. One of the pictures here is flying over Sacramento around sunrise and you can see that the panorama is distorted. I waited too long between pictures...

Just click on the pictures to see slightly larger versions.

Here are some old panoramas. I decided I would post up some that maybe aren't the prettiest, but that involve something interesting. The first is one of the first panoramas I ever took. It was stitched together by hand instead of using an automated program. I think it is a very pretty picture of New Hampshire in the fall. In the next two pictures you can see how to take panoramas with portraits. This is one real advantage of stitching photos together. If you take all of the panorama pictures and then have someone take a picture from the same spot that you are in...you can be in the panorama. The next is an image of the Golden Gate Bridge from an unusual perspective. I really need to go back and take this correctly to fill in the gaps. The following image is Chicago taken from a moving ferris wheel on Navy Pier. Taking panoramas from moving objects actually works really well. In another post I'm going to post up pictures taken from moving cars and even airplanes. Next is vertical panorama of the inside of the Chicago Macys (Old Marshal Fields). I think that vertical panoramas are really underutilized. The last two shots are the least interesting of the bunch in my opinion. One is a picture of a topiary garden in Maryland and finally just for fun I thought I would post up my panorama of the lone cyprus (the most photographed tree in the world)

Today is the vernal equinox. I'm so happy that it is finally springtime. Here was the view from my backyard this morning. Unfortunately, I really should have cleaned the camera lens after using it to take pictures for our cooking blog.

Yesterday, my brother, my cousin Steve, and I went up to play in the snow at Mt. Shasta Skipark. It was my first time snowboarding in 6 years. I did fairly well, though I am quite sore now. I can't believe that I used to be able to go off jumps and do 180s and 360s (sometimes). I did go off a couple of jumps yesterday...though I barely got off the ground!

Anyways, while there, I took some pictures and used some of them to make the panoramas below.

Top of Coyote Butte looking South (8 pictures 11000x3000 33MP)



Bottom of Douglas Butte looking East (12 pictures 14000x3000 42MP)




Top of Coyote Butte looking West (Lots of pictures 17000x5000 85MP)
Note: this picture has about 260 degree field of view horizontally and about 120 degree vertically (about 60 degrees both up and down from the horizon.) It is much wider than it looks! Also the terrain is much steeper than it looks!

Defenestration: A throwing of a person or thing out a window.
Here's a Wikipedia article about the orgins of the word.

Around Christmas this year, Liz and I went to San Francisco for a weekend and while driving came across an art installation called Defenestration. (Click on the link after you have looked at the picture below...there are some cool pics here) I should have stopped and taken pictures but I was in heavy, yet moving traffic and just decided to snap a few pictures out the window while continuing along my way... yes, I know...this doesn't seem safe...but I find I take excellent pictures while driving. Those people that talk on cell phones or text are crazy...taking pictures while driving is perfectly ok! :)

I now have a new favorite word. If my students get on my nerves I can just threaten them with defenestration. Anyways, here's the pic.

Defenestration (parts of 4 pictures 6000 x 3000 18 MP)

This last summer I went on a 40 mile bike ride up to Shasta Dam starting and ending at my house. The Sacramento river trail system in Redding is pretty sweet, especially since nobody uses the upper portion of it. But that 500 foot climb over about 1.5 miles up to the Dam is tough if you start on the West side!

Anyways, I took a bunch of pictures...mainly to rest!...and I made these panoramas. The Shasta Dam one has a 90 degree field of view vertically! So it looks a little strange, also I'm not bothering to crop it since I like to see all of the information contained in the pictures.


Shasta Dam (pieces of 20 images 9000 x 5000 45 MP)



Keswick Lake looking East (6 pictures 14000 x 3000 42 MP)




Keswick Lake Looking West (6 images 12000 x 3000 36 MP)



Spring Creek Dam (Collects and Treats Iron Mountain Runoff)
(2 images 5000 x 2500 12.5 MP)