The Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln, England

I returned yesterday from a family vacation in England. We spent a couple days in London but spent most of the week touring the countryside of England and Wales. Since we had rather tight weight restrictions for baggage, I opted not to take a tripod and resigned that no spherical panoramas would come from the trip. A tripod with a panoramic head is normally required to achieve seamless stitching of photos, lest objects in the foreground move with respect those in the background between shots.

We spent one night in Lincoln, and that morning we checked out <a href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Cathedral”>St. Mary’s Cathedral</a>. The cathedral was nearly empty when we arrived. There was an admission fee, but no one there to collect it. So, we just wandered in and checked it out.

Unlike most cathedrals we have visited, the nave was empty of seating. The presence of seating would have made it difficult to create a seamless panorama by hand because of the inevitable perspective changes. Furthermore, there were very few people, another distraction in these pictures (although sometimes used with effect).  So, I thought I might give a hand held set of pictures a try.

The results were not half bad. Because the ground is always in the foreground, it was difficult to achieve a perfect matching of the pictures there. I had to pull a few tricks to make it work, so, in the end, I just blurred the floor using Photoshop near the nadir. If it is made into a cubic sculpture, the nadir is resting in a holder, no one notices the errors as much, and blurring the image is a good compromise.

Check out the flattened cube below and a couple stereographic projections. Click on any of the images to go to the full gallery. Enjoy!

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Fontaine Saint-Michel

Up early one morning in Paris. This fountain near the Saint-Michel Metro station caught my eye. I like the fact that I caught a pigeon on top of the one of the lamps, so while it plays a minimal role in the entire spherical panorama, I can highlight it with the stereographic projection.

Jardins du Trocadéro

The Jardins du Trocadéro are across the River Seine from the Eiffel Tower.  I took at least three spherical panoramas from these gardens. I was too early for the fountains to be running, but it was a way to avoid the crowds.  Below is a proof for the cube, laid out flat in my usual manner. Following that are two stereographic projections. Click on any to see a full screen version or to proceed to the gallery, where there are more projections.  Enjoy!

Cube: Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel

On the Saturday before I took the data for this cubic panorama, I explored the area near the Arc de Triomphe at the end of the Champs Elysees. I was planning to come down as early as possible, when few people were around and the light was good. The Arc de Triomphe is surrounded by a very large traffic circle and to get to it, you take a tunnel underneath the road and pay to exit in the center. The problem was that it did not open until I wanted to be long gone and over with the exercise.

From outside the traffic circle, the top of the Arc is only about 30 degrees above the horizon. Given that the center of the upward faces of the cube are 35 degrees up, I prefer to be closer to my subjects. If I came early, perhaps I could brave running across the traffic circle to get to the center island.

So, instead, I found this much smaller Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel past the other end of the Champs Elysees, close to the Louvre museum. There were no tickets to be purchased, it wasn’t surrounded by a traffic circle, and, quite frankly, more ornate.

Like all my cubic panorama proofs, this is laid out flat. Enjoy!

Just returned from Paris: Two cubes to whet the apetite

I just returned from a work trip. I spent three weeks at the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France. Palaiseau is a suburb of Paris, so on weekends I had the chance to go into town and check out the sites.  There will be a lot of photos posted soon from this trip. I took a huge number of spherical panoramas, of which at least a few are bound to be made into cubes.  Here are the first two processed, one taken by the Hotel Albe near Saint-Michel, and other taken next to the Eiffel Tower. Remember, these are “flattened cubes,” sort of like proofs before I print the cube faces and assemble them together into a sculpture. You have to fold them up in your mind. Enjoy, and keep your eyes peeled for more!