Glacier Nat'l Park Panorama
Mike,
On our way down from our highest camp in Glacier NP last August, our youngest fogy-hiker, Reed, asked me to take a bunch of overlapping pictures from a spectacular viewpoint. Far to the left we could see the canyon we came up from Canada, in the middle we could see the distant, smoke-shrouded Lake Bowman where Beth was to meet us, and far to the right we saw the wonderful “hanging valley” alpine meadow where we camped the night before. My pictures overlapped horizontally about 30-40%, but there was one point where I had to side-step to get around some obscuring trees for the last 4 shots.
I was dubious about stitching all 11 of these pictures together, particularly because of the sidestep. But then I found a program (Doubletake) for the Mac that does the stitching automatically, and it did a wonderful job of joining the pictures that overlapped in the distance but not in the foreground. I only had to tweak the picture in one area using The Gimp to get rid of a floating tree branch.
Reed’s last name is, appropriately enough, Panos. And he really does love panos. He wants to print this picture as a 1-foot by 9 foot mural.
So here it is for your viewing pleasure.
–rakkity
Blogmeister’s note. And here it is for Adam who always wants the largest version.
Magnificent, Rakk, thanks! Looks like a lot of topography to cover — how far up the gravity well did you have to scramble, and how many times … ?
Comment by adam — November 28, 2007 @ 9:52 am
The elevation gain was minimal compared to the other places we have hiked. We started at 4200′ (Waterton Lake, Canada) and after a lovely camp below a spectacular waterfall, hiked up to Browns pass at about 6000′. Then we traversed to a giant flowery alpine cirque about 500′ higher, just below Hole-in-the-Wall Pass. This pano was shot returning on the traverse at about 6200′, just before we dropped down into the Bowman Lake basin (4000′) in the center of the picture.
I just found a similar (VR) pano , shot from the same trail, but closer to hole-in-the-wall.
Comment by rakkity — November 28, 2007 @ 12:46 pm