Here is the latest on the local swamp created by a family of beavers who are long since gone.

The first image is my standard snapshot with computerized enhancement (contrast-brightness-saturation adjustments).

The second image is from the panorama software “Hugin” that I recently acquired and have been playing with (it is open-source and did not cost anything; it is available from sourceforge among other places). Click on the image to get the full image which will require scrolling horizontally if not vertically.

The panorama covers an approximate 160 degrees from the “shoreline” on the left to the “shoreline” on the right. At the left edge you are looking almost due compass north and you can see a pink surveyor’s tape dangling from a tree. The tape marks the edge of protected wetlands. The view proceeds from left all the way to the right where you are looking almost due compass south. While we are situated probably 500 yards or less from our house, this view is entirely invisible to us or anyone on the street.

The technical aspects of the picture-taking involved my camera, wide angle zoom lens maintained at 38mm with the Aperture-priority fixed at F7.1. Six images were taken moving right to left. The fixed aperture provided a fixed field of view to minimize image distortion that would complicate the software image “stitching” computations.

The final images are a couple of the single images that the Hugin software stitched together to make the panorama.