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Photographs VR Photographs World Wide Panorama

Monteith Riverpark (revisited)

This is the Monteith Riverpark, in Albany, Oregon.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

This panorama was taken in a local park that is used to host events in addition to being a general-purpose city park. This photo is a repeat of one taken 3 years ago at the same location for the World Wide Panorama “Set” theme. I tried to take it at exactly the same spot as before in order to make the changes clear.

Categories
Essay Photographs Waterfalls

Seeing Waterfalls

This waterfall picture is a combination of two different pictures. One was taken with a short shutter speed, so that the water appears frozen. The other was taken with a long shutter speed, so that the water appears as a silky flow. There are people who prefer both; there is no “right” way to photograph a waterfall because each of the two techniques illustrates something different.

(You can see the two original pictures below; click on the pictures to see larger versions.)

Categories
Concepts Essay Photographs VR Photographs

An Experiment in Looking Carefully

This photograph of a flower was taken in a local rose garden. Like many such photos, it’s been enhanced to show aspects of the flower that, although they were subtle, still jumped out at me enough to want to share them. The very subtle colors of an ostensibly white flower, the overall form and symmetry, the water droplets speaking of a cool, damp, fall morning. All these things were there in the original view, but not as clear.

Click or tap on the picture, and you will see a version of the picture with no distractions around it. Then click or tap again and it will become an interactive picture that lets you look around and see the whole location where the picture was taken.

Swipe to pan around, and pinch to zoom in and out. Find the flower and tap it again to return to the original picture.

Categories
VR Photographs World Wide Panorama

A Community Park

This is the Yachats Commons Park in Yachats, Oregon.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

Yachats is a small coastal town, popular for tourists looking for a quiet place to spend some time on the coast. My original plan was to shoot this Wrinkle panorama in the same rose garden as the first two, but plans changed, as they often do.

This park isn’t necessarily anything special, but it did allow me to keep sort of a garden theme, and I did think this particular spot was pretty.

Categories
VR Photographs World Wide Panorama

Junction City

This is Junction City, Oregon, a city in name only.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

This spherical picture was my entry for the “Cities” theme of the World Wide Panorama in 2024.

Junction City is a very small town; its name can be seen if you look closely at the orange banners hanging along the street or the water tower peeking over the trees across the corner. Despite the name, it’s a small town with a lot of typical small town character.

Categories
VR Photographs World Wide Panorama

Waikiki Sunset

This is sunset on the Waikiki beach on Christmas day, 2008.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

This picture was taken during a family vacation but never processed. Our family had traveled to Oahu for a Christmas break vacation, and I took the opportunity to take this sphere (in addition to other photography, of course). I decided to finally finish this picture for one of my World Wide Panorama (WWP) 20 Year celebration entries this year.

This picture was difficult from several standpoints. Obviously, the bright sunset and dimmer surroundings were a challenge for photography. I had to use high dynamic range (HDR) techniques to get this much range. But also, we were traveling and I didn’t have my normal tripod. This made some aspects of taking a spherical picture more difficult.

Categories
Essay VR Photographs World Wide Panorama

A Picture of Evolution

This is the Independence Amphitheater in Independence, Oregon. It’s part of an effort by the town to transform itself from a small historical town into a vibrant destination for other communities.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

This spherical picture was my entry for the “Evolution” theme of the World Wide Panorama in 2024.

One meaning of “evolution” is directed change — change that has direction or purpose and is not totally random. We often think of the term as the direction of increasing complexity of biological systems that occurs as the result of natural selection. However, many different systems can evolve when they change purposefully, such as the evolution of this town.

Categories
VR Photographs World Wide Panorama

Avery Park (revisited)

This is the rose garden in a local park.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

This picture revisits the same location as an earlier post.

In that earlier post, new growth was just starting. Now, many flowers are in full bloom in different shades of red, although some are white like the ones in the trellis surrounding the camera.

Categories
Photographs VR Photographs World Wide Panorama

McDonald Research Forest

This was taken in the McDonald Research Forest.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

This panorama is one of my entries for the World Wide Panorama “20 Years” project, and is a repeat of one take almost seven years ago at the same location. (That earlier VR was incorrectly titled “Peavy Arboretum”. )

Categories
Concepts Photographs VR Photographs Waterfalls

More About Local Wonder

An earlier post presented the idea of “Local Wonder” as a starting point for a sort of vision for my photography. In that case, the focus was on looking closely at things to see their wonderful aspects. In addition to giving a focus for some photography, the hope is that it could also teach me to be more aware in general.

There is another aspect to being more aware that, ironically, didn’t occur to me at first, but was the first focus for my 360 photography – that it is also important to look around.