Urumqi from Red Hill Park

etherflyer has added a video to the pool:

Red Hill Park used to be on the outskirts of Urumqi, back when it was a small settlement, Now it is a park in the middle of the city. I think I could get used to living here: the air is cleaner than Beijing and it reminds me a bit of Calgary (not least in the level of frenetic capitalism!). I want to return to Xinjiang there's so much I didn't manage to see in the short time we were there.

This panorama was stitched in two stages. I took the original RAW images from four sides of the tower, as a result there was considerable parallax error between each set of four. So I used PTGUI Pro to stitch four panoramas from the images taken on each side, then I used DoubleTake to blend the four panoramas (relatively) seamlessly into each other. The resulting panorama covers a bit more than 360, but I rather like that effect so I didn't crop it to just 360. Finally I touched up the whole thing in Aperture.

I animated this video with PhotoToMovie, composed the soundtrack with Abaltat Muse and GarageBand, and added titles with iMovie.

It's taken me three years to learn enough about stitching panoramas to bring this off, but I finally managed! Here's to Michael Freeman's advice to never throw out a picture, because you never know when technology or your skills will improve enough to be able to use it.

Original size: 44181 2717 (120.0 MP; 173 MB).

Location: Red Hill Park (Hngshn Gngyun, ), rmqi (, Wlmq, ), Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region ( , Xnjing Wiwr Zzhq, ), Peoples Republic of China (Zhnghu Rnmn Gnghgu, )

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