Ben takes in the awesome sight.

The beautiful Amangani Resort in Jackson Hole. This is actually a 6-image panoramic image, shot with my trusty Nikkor 50 mm and stitched with AutoPano Pro.

While it may not be my best photo ever, this one has the distinction of occupying more disk space than any other. Comprised of 37 hand-held frames, shot with my cheapest lens due to it’s low distortion, and stitched together with the mind-blowing AutoPano Pro. The original is more than 24,000 pixels wide. The 16-bit image is just under 2 gigabytes in size. The image below links to a 6,000 pixel wide version. Get a 12,000 pixel-wide version here. (14 megabytes.)

What will I do differently next time? First, I’ll use a smaller aperture. If I had, the area behind Kelly and Ben (see her there?) would be in focus. Second, and quite surprisingly, I will not use a polarizer. The amount of filter’s effect changes with the rotational angle, so that the parts of the sky perpendicular to the rays of the sun are too dark, and the non-uniformity of the sky color in the resulting stitch is a pain to deal with. I think it looks weird, but I haven’t found a reasonable way to smooth that out without producing obviously manipulated results. Suggestions? I suppose could paste in some clouds, but that would be cheating — wouldn’t it?

By the way, if you’re at all interested in high-resolution panoramic imagery, check out this jaw-dropping 50 gigabyte image. I want to go to Vienna — now. Wow!

Here is my second attempt at recreating one of Ansel Adams’ masterpieces.

A few more of our favorite shots from our fabulous trip to Jackson Hole. As always, hover over the images to learn a little about them.

A faithful reader points out that in this shot of the canyon, the mountain on the left (Mt. Owen) is 6000 vertical feet above Kelly and the peak is just one mile as the bird flies from that spot — deeper than the Grand Canyon!

Kelly and I are heading to Jackson this weekend for mini-vacation with Chris and Ben. We’ve been wondering what kind of weather to expect, so naturally, we checked out Weather Underground, and were pleased to find a perfect forecast. The forecast for today included thundershowers, so I found the best Jackson weather cam I could find (who new there were so many?), captured a frame every 30 seconds and put together this rather cool time-lapse.

I’ve gotten lazy, so you’ll need an HTML5 browser to view the video. I recommend Chrome. Don’t worry – it’ll play perfectly on your iPhone and iPad. Maybe some day I’ll create a Flash version for the rest of you. :)

Unexpectedly perfect weather helped make our weekend with Tom and Julie thoroughly enjoyable.

You might be surprised to know that the first shot was made with an iPhone and AutoPano Pro.

My latest scanning project keeps turning up gems. I am so glad I shot this panorama of Wolstenholme Fjord — purportedly the only place on earth where three active glaciers join together. If I could have anticipated today’s technology, I might have made a much more detailed shot than this one – consisting of just two images shot with my trusty Pentax ME Super on grainy Plus-X way back in 1986.

I did a Google search, and I could not find any other photograph that shows all three of these glaciers in a single shot. Yay me!

Kelly brings good weather wherever she goes, and this time it was to our the nation’s capitol. We enjoyed sunny skies and temps in the mid-70′s during our short visit to Baltimore and Washington DC. The hotel in Baltimore was very nice — great view, comfortable bed. Parking in DC was easy, the food was fabulous. This was a most excellent adventure!

Here are a few of my favorite images from the trip. There is an awful lot to photograph in Washington DC, so please click here if you’d like to see a few more.

thedude recommends the friendly and excellent Oyamel restaurant. Try the Chapulines. You never knew grasshoppers could taste so good. Also, you must have lunch at Zaytinya. We had time to try just a few menu items, but they were all great. The brussels sprouts and the scallops are amazing. (Evidently, José Andrés knows how to run a restaurant.) Then, after lunch, be prepared to spend as much time as possible at the National Portrait Gallery — our favorite DC museum. It’s a few blocks off the mall, so there are far fewer noisy school kids than at art museums on the mall or at the Air & Space Museum. Recently restored, the spaces are beautiful, and the displays breathtaking. There is something for everyone here. You could easily spend a week at the National Portrait Gallery.

We also liked the Hirshhorn for its architecture, bold, colorful modern art and quiet spaces. Here are a few from the Hirshhorn.

While in Baltimore, we recommend Meli. The crabcake we had there was the tastiest!

I’ve always been drawn to symmetry in my images, but when you view a few of them in a group, the effect can be ridonculous! Or maybe not. What do you think?

This is the barracks I lived in from September, 1985 until March, 1987. It must be summer, because my pals are firing up the grill. Funny. I think I have more pictures of the exterior of my barracks in Thule than I do of the building I live in now…

For a month or so in the spring and fall the sun’s trajectory became very shallow – barely rising above the horizon and before setting again. The cool thing about this process is that it took a long time, so moments like this lasted for hours.

I didn’t notice all of the antennas when I lived there. Wonder what they were all for. We had no Internet (Times were tough in the mid-eighties!) and just one TV station — the always thrilling AFRTS.

The distinctive Mt. Dundas was a popular destination during the brief summer in Thule. Carved from the landscape by ancient glaciers, the thousand foot high pile of rocks offers a spectacular view of the confluence of three huge glaciers. I’d love to see the place now, although it might be depressing to see how far the ice has receded.