Roosevelt Island is right in the middle of the East River between Manhattan and Queens. It has some great views (Midtown and the Upper East Side), and some not so great views (an ugly powerplant in Long Island City). I am not sure what the Southpoint Park is usually used for. But unfortunately it closes after sunset. A friendly police officer asked me to leave before I was able to finish my panorama, since he wanted to lock the gate. At least I got 5 shots done in HDR with my new DSLR setup.
Update: A thing that I learned from dealing with cops: keep shooting… Most people won’t notice that you photograph if you don’t have the camera in your face… if it’s on a tripod, and you have a remote, just keep going…
It took a while to post this and it was sitting all the time on my hard disk while I was waiting for an update of my stitching software. Now the update came, and I was finally able to make this panorama.
Digital, about 400 megapixel.
I moved into my appartment in Astoria 5 years ago. It’s a great neighbourhood and I call it sometimes East Manhattan, because it doesn’t feel like Queens. It had a great view to the north of the Triboro Bridge and I could see Manhattan from the windows on the south side of my building.
Some day in the summer of 2005 the small two story building across the street was demolished, and I started documenting the new construction in October 2005, trying to take a picture every morning. November 30, 2005 was the last time I was able to see the Triboro Bridge from my appartment.
The basic construction was finished in May 2006, but it took them another 6 months or more to finish the interior. When I took the last picture of the sequence on January 19, 2007, nobody had yet moved in.
This is not really a panorama of the 360 degree kind, it’s a 470 day panorama.
Update: I redid the video, and uploaded a HD version to vimeo, as you can see above.
Go to the middle of the floor, lie down on your back and put on your fisheye goggles (and have fun explaining what you’re doing to the before mentioned security guards). Or just look at this picture, almost the same thing.
Digital, about 10000x4000px.
This is the beginning of a panorama series on Grand Central Station. It’s a work in progress so stay tuned.
You can forget about shooting in Grand Central without a tripod, but getting a permit to bring the tripod in and set it up – what with security and pedestrian traffic concerns – was a bit of a hassle.
And while it was somewhat of a nuisance while I was shooting, it was also reassuring that everyone remotely concerned with security at Grand Central Station (National Guard, NYC, MTA, and Metro North police, security guards, and ordinary employees of various transportation agencies, etc.,) took their job seriously and actually came by during the 30 minutes I was there to check my permit sticker.
Digital, about 17000x6500px.
A couple of people have suggested that I post black & white versions of my color panoramas. If you’d like to see a particular panorama in black & white, let me know and I’ll get to it as soon as I can.
Update (March 2007): After spending a lot of work on getting great colors into my panoramas, I will drop the idea posting black&white version for the foreseeable future.
All images on this site (unless especially noted) are copyrighted and may not be used for any purpose without written permission. Please contact me with any questions.
