Top: World's first 360-degree Panorama of Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia, Feb 24/2009, from 12 separate photos...

Saturday 14 February 2009

Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

Amazing delicacy of solid H2O - oh yeah, but wasn't that the material which destroyed the Titanic?

Nicely lichened fenceposts

This sign means, "Welcome, tourist, you're on the right path"

The guys of all ages playing footie in the fading sunset light of Shkhara, Georgia's highest mountain, some 7 km away from them



Friday 13 February 2009

Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

Several more random images from the last week or so. As with the previous post, I'm posting this "in the future" in case, as often happens here in winter, we're a few days without electricity.


Thursday 12 February 2009

Panoramas, Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

Posting this entirely using battery power on laptop & cellphone as, after a night of fairly heavy snow, we lost electricity as expected.

Hmm, looks like I was a bit hasty in writing off the EOS's bundled panorama stitching software.  It doesn't give a great size or tonal range when you work with RAW files, but convert them to .tif - lowering the contrast and getting the component images as close as possible to each other in tone in the process - & suddenly you're at full original resolution.  Here are a couple of pairs of panoramas to compare for the new and old ways of doing things, old attempt on top, new underneath.  A vast improvement.


Wednesday 11 February 2009

Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

Top: 2 of my 3rd-group English student boys taking the manure sled back home after a trip to the field

Clearing a potato field for footie - a line of guys walking with linked arms to trample the knee-deep snow.  I joined in, but after 2 round trips I felt as though I'd played the whole of a 2-hour game, so here I am collapsed in repose, watching the actual game, which ended up being played in the cows' day-paddock, once this had been suitably shovelled of cow-pats (final shot, ball helpfully false-coloured yellow so you can see it!).  Such is footie in Ushguli.