A vertical representation of a very wide DIGITAL reality :)
Unexpectedly, yesterday, I had to go to Algarve, in the south of Portugal, a place known for its superb Summer beaches. Algarve only has frontiers with Alentejo - another beautiful portuguese province -, Spain, and the Atlantic ocean.
This time of year, Algarve gets crowded with foreign tourists, mainly from France, Germany, Spain and England. These tourists are looking for warm and calm waters, and for broad landscapes where they can truly escape from the regular city ambiances. Of course too many tourists can bring problems to the locals, as the water and electricity structures suddenly are requested to serve & power one or two million more people!! These problems did manifest themselves until 4, 5 years ago, but since then Algarve is growing mature and trying to fit the inevitable population growth with the available resources, with considerable success.
In Algarve, near many popular beaches, you will find a very irregular construction architecture, due to the construction boom that happened when the province was requested to host so many more habitants. This chaotic building boom caused some environmental traumas, that take time to heal...
But things are improving and you can find the most wonderful resorts... if you search for them. I searched and found "Praia do Beliche", near "Sagres" [the left bottom corner of Portugal], a virtually untouched place.
To put it simple: eastern Algarve is crowded; western Algarve (Sagres) is relatively virgin territory. Here you'll find Algarve's _coldest_ water, and that is GREAT! It is so clean and healthy! Cold water means less people looking for it, and cleaner fun! It also suits me, as I can spend a considerable amount of time bathing in cold water, like if I was under some anesthesia :) If I was to spend the same time on regular temperature beaches, I would probably feel cold sooner... lack of anesthesia :)
I had my SONY Digital Mavica camera with me, and I took shots of the surroundings. These shots are 1024x768 stills.
I constructed this TRUE +200 degrees view of the place, from a collection of 5 consecutive stills!
The image on your left is a gigantic [low quality] 150 x 1011 version of my work. If you want to check my DIGITAL photo montage in all its amateur glory, go ahead and download this file [1459 KB ZIP]. When unzipped, this file will show you a 1472 KB JPEG image, with a 4204 x 656 resolution. You can then watch the picture with any regular JPEG viewer and scroll through its +200 degrees!!
DIGITAL photo editing is a new serious interest of mine... expect more stuff soon, mainly very ___WIDE___ pictures... I wonder how 360 degrees pictures will show... :)
Please notice that the picture on your left is a vertical flip of the horizontal original!
More: the picture you are seeing and downloading has not been color matched / edited. That is the reason why it shows different tones of blue. Without digital correction such variations are inevitable, because all the source pictures were taken from the same standing position, casting different shadows. Blame it on the Sun and on the CCDs...