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This is a shot that I have wanted to take for some time. I’ve often thought this flat circle on the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park would make an interesting 360 panorama, especially for a little planet. I had to wait for the right time of year to get the Milky Way overhead, the right time of month for a new moon, and the right weather for a clear sky. The night before a photo workshop I co-instructed with Vincent Lawrence looked ideal after 1AM or so. I waited out the moving clouds and strong wind for a short window of clear sky before astronomic dawn. Everyone else had already left and I had the mountain top to myself.
Camera settings: 14mm, f/2.8, ISO 6400, 17 seconds for the sky and 14mm, f/2.8, ISO 6400, 121 seconds for the ground.
Stitching data: 2 rows of 6 images x 2 exposures for a total of 24 images.
Equipment used: Nikon D810, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8, DslrDashboard on a Nexus 7 tablet, Nodal Ninja RD16-II rotator, and Really Right Stuff TVC-34L tripod, leveling base, & pano/gimbal head. Long exposure noise reduction via Pixel Fixer, RAW conversion in Lightroom, aligned with PTGui, and manually blended with masks in Photoshop. Planned with PhotoPills.
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The United States is one of the most diverse countries on earth, jam packed full of amazing sights from St. Patrick's cathedral in New York to Mount Hollywood California.The Northeast region is where it all started. Thirteen British colonies fought the American Revolution from here and won their independence in the first successful colonial rebellion in history. Take a look at these rolling hills carpeted with foliage along the Hudson river here, north of New York City.The American south is known for its polite people and slow pace of life. Probably they move slowly because it's so hot. Southerners tend not to trust people from "up north" because they talk too fast. Here's a cemetery in Georgia where you can find graves of soldiers from the Civil War.The West Coast is sort of like another country that exists to make the east coast jealous. California is full of nothing but grizzly old miners digging for gold, a few gangster rappers, and then actors. That is to say, the West Coast functions as the imagination of the US, like a weird little brother who teases everybody then gets famous for making freaky art.The central part of the country is flat farmland all the way over to the Rocky Mountains. Up in the northwest corner you can find creative people in places like Portland and Seattle, along with awesome snowboarding and good beer. Text by Steve Smith.