Nature

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Life Flight Helicopter under the Evening Sky

I was impressed by the shutter speed on my Droid X to capture the rotors with such clarity.

 

 

On the flip side, here is an untouched photograph of Ezra that I took just by rotating the Droid X as the picture was taken.  This was in the evening, less light on the ground.  Apparently it was centered on his right eye, because his left eye looks blurry.

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Panoramic of Simondale Excavating at work

It’s spring and with the beauty of the trees and forest, the end of the snow and rain, came time to do a bit more earth moving.  I believe this panoramic photograph should illustrate the quality of work rendered by Jim Simondale and Matt Simondale from Simondale Excavating, Warriors Mark, PA.  Matt can be reached at (814) 935-8591.

Bear in mind that this covers 180 degrees, so keep that in “perspective” as you scroll left-to-right.  As usual, click the picture to see full-size.

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Panoramic of Winter Scene

This one was comprised of about 87 overlapping photographs.

Eli took his new tripod, on a bitter cold day, and set it up on the “top tier” of cleared ground, capturing about 270 degrees of the scene.

Again, we used Hugin to stitch it together.

(click image to see full size version)

 

The cameramen at work…

 

 

And lastly, here is the recorded “activity” in the new Home School software.

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360 Panoramic from the Top of the Hill

I took about 45 photos today, freehand, with Eli’s FinePix point-and-shoot digital camera.  The camera isn’t in top shape, and the light of the sun really washed out some of the shots, which was propagated to all shots by Hugin while stitching.

I would imagine that if I knew more about Hugin, that I could prevent some of this.

Regardless, it’s a pretty cool picture.  Zechariah is in it, if you can find him!

(make sure you click it and let your browser open it full size)

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Panoramic Image of Woods and 3 Driveways

Using the Motorola Droid X, I took about 10 photographs at 5MP, freehand.  Then I used Hugin, the open source image stitching software.

I had never stitched images together, but I must say this tool is impressive.  The images were all various shades, angles, and since taken freehand, not straight.

However, see the result below…

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Simondale Excavating from Warriors Mark, PA

Simondale Excavating is doing an excellent job of leveling some ground on a hillside.  If you need any excavation work in the Altoona/Tyrone/Huntingdon/State College area (or nearby), do not hesitate to call Jim or Matt at (814) 632-8590.

Upon meeting Jim Simondale and Matt Simondale, I was very impressed by their knowledge, demeanor, and interest in my project.  I met with them 3 times on site prior to starting this project, and every detail has been covered as discussed.

This may seem like a small thing, but I appreciated that all of their equipment (trucks, excavators, bull dozers, etc…) were newer models, very well maintained, clean (as is reasonable), and had their logo painted neatly across.  All signs of being professional.

[As I understand it, they are also do quite a number of septic systems and sand mounds.]

Update: June 2011: Matt and Jim and their crew came out again and did another whole round of grading, moving, and excavating.  They built and/or surfaced over 1/4 mile of slate covered roads, dug a pond, corrected some frost damage to earthen banks, and made everything really nice.  I thought the price estimate was very fair, and they came in dead on, despite doing a number of extras.  Here is an updated photo:

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Outstanding view from the top of the hill.

See how nice the grading of the bank is?  All done with the large excavator pictured above.

And Mr. Ezra, standing on top of the hill…