PTViewer

Where it enters the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi river is over two miles wide. At its origin, at Lake Itasca in Minnesota, it is spanned by a log bridge. On a recent trip up to that part of the world, I shot this panorama from the log bridge. Where the "mighty" Mississippi exits Lake Itasca, you can actually rock-hop across the exit stream, as some kids are doing in this pan. In warmer weather, you could easily wade across, as well. On this chilly day in early June, temperatures were in the 50s (F) so only the brave were willing to wade across. This pan was shot using a chain pod at 1/30 second, f/4 at ISO 100 using a D200 and 10.5mm fisheye. While not quite as sharp as if it were shot on a tripod with a longer exposure and smaller aperture, it gives a reasonable sense of the origin of one of the great rivers of the world. To navigate within the panorama, press and hold the left mouse button. Moving the mouse up/down/right/left will shift the viewing window accordingly. Holding down the "Shift" key will zoom in; holding down the "Ctrl" key will zoom out. If you have the patience and bandwidth to download a 4-meg file, the Quicktime QTVR file will yield much higher resolution than the smaller PTViewer file above. The panorama was taken June 6, 2009. It was stitched using PTGui and the high-resolution Quicktime cubic VR generated using the Pano2QTVR utility.