June 13, 2008

The Weeping Beech of Chateau-sur-Mer

I'm planning to put together a full gallery, including some HDRs, but wanted to go ahead and post this 360 VR that I made during our trip to Newport, Rhode Island.

I'll save a more extensive write-up on Newport for the full gallery entry, but I will take a moment here to say that I highly recommend making the trek there if you haven't been before. I was unfamiliar with Newport and its history until just recently when we received an invitation to visit some friends in their final weeks before they relocate to Maryland. Suffice it to say, I'm glad we took the opportunity while we had it... both to visit our friends and to see this rather unique piece of American history.

Newport, in a nutshell, was the oceanside summer playground of the American aristocracy in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Names like Vanderbilt, Berwind, Oelrichs and Wetmore are synonymous with the area. These insanely wealthy, status-driven families built monstrous mansions here that they often used for only seven weeks out of the year. The most elite of the New York social scene migrated, en masse, to Newport for several weeks of nightly entertaining and continuous attempts to outdo one another throwing the most lavish parties and balls. Naturally, they took their staffs (often numbering 30 or more) of maids and liveried footmen with them to tend to their every need.

The rest of the year, the houses generally sat empty and were maintained by a caretaker with a small staff that looked after the place and readied it for the next summer season of over-the-top entertaining.

For a sense of the sheer number of estates, have a look at this Google Maps satellite view centered on Chateau-sur-Mer and the bulk of the mansions on Bellevue Avenue.

Anyway, as I said, I'll write more about the trip in a separate post with a wider array of photos. This entry is all about the Weeping Beech tree that sits outside of one of the more unique mansions on the island: Chateau-sur-Mer. After touring the home and on our way back to our car, I happened to step through the curtain of branches to see what the tree looked like "inside". Needless to say, it was pretty amazing and also pleasantly cool since we hit Newport in a bizarre, 90+ degree heat and humidity wave.

I've prepared an HDR version of this pano as well, but it needs a little more tweaking. In the meantime, this mid-tone (0 EV, 7 fisheye shots) set from the five exposure HDR spread (-4EV to +4 EV in 2 EV increments: 35 shots) does a decent job of representing the scene. This file is about 12 MB in size and retains a good deal of its resolution, so give it a moment to load if you're on a slow connection.

May 5, 2007

Williamsburg & Jamestown

Williamsburg & Jamestown

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Williamsburg is one of my favorite places in the world, so I love any chance I get to do even a couple of hours of photography there (see: anniversary / pre-inauguration / inauguration). This past weekend, I traveled with my Dad and Aunt for two days in the Historic Triangle.

Our main goal was to see the fantastic new exhibits at Jamestown since this is the 400th year anniversary. A few new exhibits had just opened this past weekend that we wanted to see, so we decided to hit them while the weather was nice and before the security insanity of the Queen's visit or next weekend's celebration festivities.

The archaeological site being managed by the APVA is quite fascinating and their new Archaearium is beautifully laid out.

We also made visits to the Glasshouse and the Jamestown Settlement, neither of which I have been to since I was in grade school. The Jamestown Settlement in particular turned out to be absolutely fantastic.

As children, my Dad and Aunt both visited Jamestown in 1957 when the original museum and "festival park" was first established for 350th anniversary celebration. Because of this, returning to see the new, far more elaborate museum built in honor of the 400th anniversary was a nice twist. We hope to make a few return visits during the course of 2007 and 2008, partly to see the various installations of a multi-part exhibit entitled World of 1607.

I can honestly say that the permanent exhibit alone is one of the best I've ever seen and is certainly equal to, and in many ways, more elegant than a lot of the Smithsonian exhibits I've visited in Washington, D.C.

The photos in this set include sunrise shots of Williamsburg, the Jamestowne archaeological site, Glasshouse, and Jamestown Settlement.

I'm also in the process of reworking various parts of this site, specifically the slideshows. This is the first halfpress slideshow I've ever paired with music, so let me take a moment to also thank Magnatune and the Brook Street Band for their recording of Handel's Sonata No. 4 in G Major - Allegro A Tempo Ordinario.

Williamsburg & Jamestown

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Enjoy!
- Aaron

(Note: The current version of this gallery is fairly bandwidth-intensive, so a word of warning to people on slow connections... I'm making adjustments as I experiment...)

June 12, 2006

Blue Ridge Parkway - Panoramic VR

I decided to spend some time driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway on Saturday. I got on it at the intersection with Route 60 and drove south to the Peaks of Otter where I had a light dinner. I then drove back north again past Route 60 to the intersection with Route 56 (an ungodly windy road that also serves Crabtree Falls), returning home via Route 151 and 29 South.

The weather was gorgeous, albeit slightly overcast and more than a bit chilly in the wind. I was also shocked at how few other people I saw over the course of about six hours of driving around.

I stopped where the parkway crosses the James River near Big Island and decided to do a VR Panorama standing on the Harry Flood Byrd Memorial Bridge. There is a footbridge suspended underneath the automotive bridge allowing you to walk from one bank to the other and enjoy the scenery from a nice vantage point in between.

I thought the long, straight lines in both directions coupled with the water and the mountains made for an interesting VR opportunity. It's also one of the first VR's I've made with completely successful nadir (ground) and zenith (overhead) elements. The result has no visible tripod legs or mount... it's as if the shot was taken floating above the ground in a 360 degree bubble.

The VR is viewable two different ways: the traditional QuickTime method or the smoother, more barf-inducing fullscreen PangeaVR method. To view the latter, be sure you download and install the free OpenGL PangeaVR browser plug-in. It's really worth the few minutes it takes to download and install.

Enjoy!
- Aaron

November 13, 2005

Virginia Safari Park

Elisabeth and I spent Saturday and part of Sunday in the Shenandoah Valley with an overnight at Skyland Resort. Skyland and Big Meadows are my two favorite places to visit and stay along Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Forest. If you've not been to either, I highly recommend them both (with my personal favorite being Big Meadows Lodge).

Another thing I can now highly recommend is Virginia Safari Park. It's located near Natural Bridge just across 81 on Route 11. Our plan was to swing through the safari park for a bit, take some pictures and then head on up the valley to Skyline drive for our overnight stay at Skyland. As it turns out, the safari park experience was so much fun that we went through it twice - a visit of about three and a half to four hours.

Basically, you pay at the gate, buy a few buckets of animal feed (looks like rabbit food) and then drive at your own pace along a few miles of winding gravel road through quintessential rural Virginia fields and woods.

Nothing about the surroundings is particuarly unlike the countryside I've grown up in around rural Virginia. What is remarkably different, though, is the constant attention you are receiving from llamas, camels, elk, ostriches, emus, zebras, pigs, bison, gazelle, deer of all kinds and numerous (and I mean numerous) other species (note: I'm going to need to research my plurals there). We didn't buy the guidebook and, despite a lifetime of watching National Geographic and Discovery Channel, I couldn't put a name to everything I saw, smelled, touched or from which I received a slobbery snuffle in the constant quest for bucketized snacks.

The whole experience is a blast. Yes, you're going to end up with rabbit food all over the inside of your car, your windows are going to get pasted in slobber (as will your hands and arms in certain cases), you're going to discover that llamas have horrid breath, that zebras like to taste the housing of your rearview mirrors and wipers, and that zebra sneezes can throw "liquid" all the way from the driver side to the passenger side and out the other window. Oh, and hold the bucket with both hands or the camel is going to just take it from you and munch on it with his head four feet over the roof of your car.

And, like I said, we did it twice. And we're also going to go back in a couple of weeks and take a friend who is visiting over Thanksgiving. That will be the last couple of days of their season, so go now or you'll have to wait until next year.

I took the batch of photos on our first run with my Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 DG EX Macro lens. I adore this lens, but it can't quite focus closely enough (or wide enough) when a zebra decides to shove his entire head into your lap or an elk decides to snuffle the side of your face. On the second trip through, I shot the first half of close animal encounters with my Sigma 8mm f/4 EX Circular Fisheye. You get that traditional 180 degree fisheye bubble effect (I mostly use this lens for doing stitched panoramas), but the results inside the close quarters of a car are unmatched in terms of field of view and, more importantly, are highly comedic. :)

The drive through the winding park is the highlight attraction, but you can park your car and stretch your legs a bit walking around in the more zoo-like section of the facility. The most fascinating part of this section (among the kangaroos, various birds, goats, etc) is the giraffe feeding station. They apparently added this attraction this year and I'm sorry we didn't get to spend more time in it. You can buy some "giraffe crackers" and then feed these docile, skittish giants at their head level. Their tongues look to be about six inches long and their eyes are about the size of billiard balls. The eyelashes give them a somewhat cartoony, feminine appearance. Next time we go back, I'm buying some crackers so I can interact with them a bit more.

All in all, it's a fun trip and one we plan on repeating. I took over 600 shots and selected about 140 to which I have applied some basic edits for color, etc. I captioned a few of them to tell more of the story.

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Enjoy!
- Aaron

September 11, 2005

Agecroft Hall - Richmond, Va

Elisabeth and I are getting away for two days to celebrate our "French" anniversary (we had two ceremonies in two countries, so we technically celebrate two anniversary dates each September... one planned by each of us). We headed to Richmond for the night and have been playing it by ear for things to do. After a nice brunch and checking into our hotel, I started looking at some guides to local attractions. I stumbled upon a listing for Agecroft Hall and remembered having visited it and enjoyed it a great deal more than a dozen years ago. With nothing else planned and the weather positively gorgeous, we decided to spend the afternoon touring the home and its gardens.

Agrecroft Hall is a 500+ year old Elizabethan estate that was disassembled and transported to the United States in the 1920's. It was rebuilt in predominantly the same manner and used as a private residence for 30+ years before becoming a museum in the late 1960s.

Much to my irritation, there was no photography allowed inside during the tour. As I said before, though, the weather was fantastic today and I had some fun shooting around the gardens. Nothing about these photos is especially spectacular, but it'll give you a taste of a pleasant, pre-fall day at Agecroft:

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August 12, 2005

Archive: Udvar-Hazy Smithsonian Air & Space Visit

I'm finally getting around to putting some of my older galleries of images into the archive here on halfpress. These are some shots I took earlier this year during a few brief hours at the new Udvar-Hazy facility, the latest addition to Smithsonian's Air & Space exhibits.

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This is really a fantastic place. I wish I had been able to spend more time there that day and I definitely plan to return soon for a more leisurely visit.

Shots include the Space Shuttle Enterprise, the SR-71 Blackbird and the Air France Concorde.

August 1, 2005

Archive: Wedding Travels - France - September, 2003

There is so much to write about this selection of photos... I guess I'll have to come back to it in the future. For the meantime, though, I wanted to get the gallery re-written to the new blog format and into the random image pool.

These were taken with my older Canon PowerShot G2... truly a fun camera.

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This is a pretty diverse set of images covering the Upper Loire Valley by canal boat, La Roche Posay east of Poitiers and Paris (among other stops).

Enjoy!
- Aaron

Archive: Williamsburg - September 2004

This is a selection of shots I took in Williamsburg last September while taking a couple of days away for our first anniversary.

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I'm just populating the galleries right now with older images while I finish the site build-out.

Hope you enjoy them...

- Aaron

July 31, 2005

Inaugural Gallery Post - St. Thomas, USVI

I'll inaugurate the blog (and the evolving site design) with the photos I took on our recent week on St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.

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Enjoy! Much more coming including re-generated older photo galleries and a proper introduction to the blog itself.