View the beauty of Paris in a 26 Gigapixel HD panorama

I’m in love with Paris – ever since my first visit, it has been my absolute favorite destination. Even after close to 60 visits, I never get bored of the atmosphere. Right now, I’m sitting behind my desk enjoying the city in all its splendor, thanks to a 26 Gigapixel panoramic photo.

The panorama was created by Martin Loyer and Arnaud Frich, and involved shooting 2346 individual photos, and combining them into a single image 354159×75570 pixels large. Their site lets you browse around the panorama and zoom in on any portion.

Helpful pointers describe some of the various landmarks, along with their history. On the right hand side, you’ll find a handy set of links to the most popular Parisian monuments.

And finally, in the top right hand corner is a small “HD” button – after installing a Microsoft plugin, you’ll be able to view the panorama in “real” HD quality.

The amount of detail is amazing – it obviously isn’t as nice as actually being there, but it sure is a fun way to spend my morning.

Absolutely breathtaking photo of the Presidential inauguration

By now I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of photo and video material of the inauguration of our 44th President.

The picture you see above it probably no different from any of the other of 1000’s made that day.

There is however one big difference – it is a whopping 1,474 megapixels. For comparison – your home camera probably shoots in 7 or 8 megapixels.

Of course, a massive photo is useless without some fancy tricks to help view it, so click here to view the original, and use your mouse or keyboard to scroll around or zoom in – you’ll be able to zoom in far enough to see who in the crowds around President Obama was bored, and who was freezing their backside off in the frigid DC weather.

The photo was made by David Bergman with a regular Canon G10 camera, mounted on a Gigapan robotic mount. The final image is built around 220 different photos, and took almost 7 hours to create on his Mac.

If you are feeling creative, and want to make your own panoramic photos, you can buy your own Gigapan robotic mount for just $279.

The Coolest Picture Ever

I saw this image shortly after I woke up this morning, and it did several things:

  • It made me smile — because it’s beautiful.
  • It made me frown — because I have to work indoors today.
  • It made me want to share it with you — because it is, indeed, the coolest picture ever.

Tristan “Shu” Lebeschu is a photographer who makes “action panoramas.” When you click over to check out the full image, don’t forget to rotate the image around; the real surprise in the image is behind you.

So amazingly cool.