Harlem-13-Gigapixels
July 18, 2007 11:12 PM   Subscribe

On a summer afternoon in 2006, New York photographer Gerard Maynard captured his neighborhood from a rooftop at 7th Avenue and 110th Street. The resulting 2,045 photographs, stitched together, comprise a 13-gigapixel panorama of Harlem's skyline. Best viewed with HDView option (MS Internet Explorer only).
posted by LinusMines (32 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh, wow. It's amazing and beautiful. I love it.
posted by stefanie at 11:39 PM on July 18, 2007


An amazing technical achievement but its in service of a kind of boring subject.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 11:44 PM on July 18, 2007


Excellent post! Thank you.
posted by rockhopper at 11:45 PM on July 18, 2007


If you want to try something like this yourself (on a smaller scale, at least), there's a free version of the software: Autostitch. Way better than Photoshop's "photomerge" function, in my experience. I've been able to do stuff like this with a basic kit lens.
posted by flod at 12:01 AM on July 19, 2007 [1 favorite]


Not black enough.
posted by dhammond at 12:01 AM on July 19, 2007 [2 favorites]


Great technology, but the excitement level of the picture itself is pretty low.
posted by zardoz at 12:13 AM on July 19, 2007


works fine with FF 2.0.0.5
posted by edgeways at 12:16 AM on July 19, 2007


Incredible! Thanks, flod, for the Autostitch lead.
posted by McLir at 12:21 AM on July 19, 2007


(MS Internet Explorer only)

Are you new here? I mean, new to the Internet.
posted by humblepigeon at 1:41 AM on July 19, 2007


Great technology, but the excitement level of the picture itself is pretty low.
Well just wait until we find some naked people who were standing in front of their windows when the pictures were taken.
posted by chillmost at 3:19 AM on July 19, 2007


flod, do you use a pano head on your tripod?
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:25 AM on July 19, 2007


Well just wait until we find some naked people who were standing in front of their windows when the pictures were taken.

I found one. You'd think Bill Clinton would have learned his lesson by now.
posted by Optamystic at 3:28 AM on July 19, 2007


That guy's camera is amazing. You can zoom and zoom and zoom. On the horizon, roughly halfway left, there's a clump of buildings. There's one in front that's dark grey with a red shingle roof. The entire building is barely visible in panorama view, but you can zoom in close enough to see individual shingles on the roof.

You'll know you spotted the building I'm talking about if you see what looks like large stone trophy cups all along the roof line... sort of like gargoyles, but they're cups instead.
posted by Malor at 3:37 AM on July 19, 2007


(That building is one clump to the right of the giant brown cathedral/church thing on the horizon.)
posted by Malor at 3:39 AM on July 19, 2007


This guy should team up with the Where's Waldo people.
posted by Malor at 3:45 AM on July 19, 2007


Damn you Malor, I came here to make that joke.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:59 AM on July 19, 2007


Damn you dhammond, I came here to make that joke.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:02 AM on July 19, 2007


But I like the ghost cars and buses on the avenue: half there/half not.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:03 AM on July 19, 2007


It's not the number of pixels that the camera can capture that's important, it's the CCD size!

Geeze...some people will never learn...
posted by DarkElf109 at 4:27 AM on July 19, 2007


Very nice. It's like a DIY version of Seadragon/Photosynth.
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:53 AM on July 19, 2007


[Minus the extra metadata, but it's still impressive]
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:54 AM on July 19, 2007


I've got the pay version of Autopano Pro (the software used). Having tried a number of stitching tools, including many free ones, I gotta say Autopano Pro is really worth the price. Its ability to analyze a directory full of images and recognize individual panoramas is amazing and fast. After spending hours trying to get Panotools to not be stupid, Autopano Pro is a joy.
posted by rlk at 5:07 AM on July 19, 2007


New York City is so fucking beautiful.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:28 AM on July 19, 2007


Who's first to find a cat?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:30 AM on July 19, 2007


Funny. I didn't even know 7th Ave. met 110th. I lived over on 110th and Riverside Drive. Got used to thinking of Broadway as being the same as 7th Ave. Woops.

Awesine image, but I'd like it lots more if he had gone to my old building, overlooking the Hudson.
posted by Goofyy at 7:21 AM on July 19, 2007


So for the non-New-York-inclined:

- the cathedral on the left is St. John the Divine, the towering spire just left of center on the horizon is Riverside Cathedral;
- the large red brick building just in front of that cathedral is John Jay Hall (one of the dorms at Columbia University);
- the smaller red brick building in front of John Jay and more or less centered on it in this photo is the swank-as-hell mansion that's given to the current president of Columbia;
- the large red brick building to the right of John Jay is East Campus (another dorm at Columbia, and I can see the window of my sophomore-year dorm room right up at the top of it!);
- the white building between these two is Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs;
- continuing rightward on the horizon, the bridge you see is the mighty George Washington bridge, crossing from upper Manhattan to Fort Lee, NJ;
- the big white building just to the right of the GW Bridge tower is part of the City University of New York (the old CCNY);
- the tall building to the right of that, and pretty far back on the horizon, is the first of three towers that are the upper-level dorms for Columbia's medical school;
- continuing to the middle of the frame, the large white office building that's just to the right of the street that bisects the photo is the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. state office building;
- I don't know much at all about most of the right side of the photo (can you tell I was an upper west sider?!?);
- the greenery that starts up near the rightmost part of the photo is the northeast corner of Central Park;
- you can catch the tiniest of glimpses of the topmost bits of the Triboro Bridge tower above the first bits of Central Park;
- the big black towering building visible above the Park is Mount Sinai Hospital, and the two glass triangular atrium-like areas in front of it were designed by I.M. Pei (of course);
- finally, at the VERY right edge of the photo, just above the Park, you can see the Citicorp Building with its famous diagonal roofline.

That's all I got.... this is pretty cool.
posted by delfuego at 7:29 AM on July 19, 2007 [2 favorites]


That's really cool. Thanks.
posted by dios at 7:37 AM on July 19, 2007


Interesting - the red building next to the two high rise flats has windows where somebodys stuck black bin liners on the windows......maybe somebody should visit them or something......
posted by sgt.serenity at 7:48 AM on July 19, 2007


It's fun to spot the Rosenwach watertowers with their beige tops and, thanks to the detail of this panorama, their distinctive 4xR shaped cap pin.
posted by JBennett at 7:50 AM on July 19, 2007


So cool. Thanks.
posted by rtha at 8:53 AM on July 19, 2007


chuckdarwin, no, I handheld my camera and methodically shot my entire visual range, starting from top/left and ending at bottom/right, with guesstimated overlap between each shot. (I'm balancing on that beam in the middle; no room for a tripod.)

As long as you give it full coverage, Autostitch is amazing in its ability to sort, align and color-correct rough data.
posted by flod at 10:33 AM on July 19, 2007


(MS Internet Explorer only)

Are you new here? I mean, new to the Internet.


No, just unwilling to switch from Spyglass Mosaic.
posted by LinusMines at 12:58 PM on July 19, 2007


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