Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Returning from a photosafari trip to the Grand Canyon, our helicopter landed to to refuel at a depot in the middle of the desert. Someone turned to look to the east, and with a shout of "The Light!", nine helicopters-worth of photographers turned and started shooting.

The horizon was lit in yellow, with a range of mountains rising over the dark twilight scrub, reflecting the setting sun and shining against the pearl of the evening sky.



See the full size image here. It's a 4MB download...

I've used the latest version of ArcSoft's Panorama Maker software (which they demonstrated at PMA to considerable acclaim) to stitch together a panorama from a set of images of the mountains. It uses a graph cut algorithm, so the stitching is much smoother than with earlier panorama tools.

The BT Tower is 40 this weekend.

We know how much it weighs, 13,000 tons, as well as the degree to which it is designed to sway, about 8 inches, in winds of up to 100mph. In winter the Tower contracts; in summer it expands by as much as nine inches.

Click here for a QuickTime VR panorama I made from photographs I took from the tower a few years ago. Be prepared for a wait - it's a 5MB file made from 40 or so photographs taken from each window on the observation deck while it was stationary. As it was made from a set of 4 Mpixel images there's quite a bit of zoom available too...


One of the photographs I used to make the 360° panorama.

With work about to begin on the refurbishment of the slowly decaying iconic edifice of the Battersea Power Station, with its four white chimneys, the BBC has taken its cameras inside the crumbling brick power station.



Surprisingly many of the original fixtures and fittings are still in place, with rooms that look as if the engineers had just walked out to get a nice hot cup of tea...



Click here for a gallery of pictures, and here for a set of panoramas and pictures of the building as it was, as it is, and as it may well be in the future...