So I was playing around with this software called SPi-V.  It's a web-based, video-accelerated engine for viewing panoramic images.  I loaded in one of the panoramic images I shot this past spring in Arizona, from Monument Valley.  After some Photoshop work to get the edges to line up, I was able to create a cool little page to display the huge image (over 19 megapixels after resizing to a workable resolution) in an interactive manner.  You can see Dan shooting pictures of The Thumb if you look close enough.  Check it out.



(It requires Adobe Shockwave which can be downloaded for free here: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/)

I got back from Europe about a month ago...it's been a long time coming with the photos but I'm finally done. Below the jump are some photos and the full album from the trip is at http://picasaweb.google.com/maxwellk/EuropeanDelivery.

We started in Munich, went east to Freiburg, to visit Chris and Berni at the university there, then went down through eastern Switzerland and also hit up Austria and Italy. Then we got news that we could visit Chateau Miraval, the Chateau that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are renting out and going to buy for $70M, if we could make it down to the south of France by the next morning. We drove through the night, got a few hours of sleep, and visited the next day. Did wine tasting and also got a tour of the studio there that such albums as Pink Floyd's The Wall and Rammstein's Mutter were recorded. Got to listen to the albums in the same space they were originally recorded! Then we headed down to Cannes and Nice and spend two days there, each. On the last day, we took 3 hours before we had to turn the car in and drove the Col de Turini. Amazing road, wish that we had spent more time on it!

I carried a small GPS receiver with me which recorded the route. I've downloaded the trip files and wrote a little web app to see the route that we took. Check it out here - http://www.maxwellkruger.com/europeandelivery/. If you turn on high detail, you can actually zoom in and see to the foot exactly where we were at most stages of the trip. If it's running too slow for you, try to turn down the detail. Also, this means that most of the photos are geotagged so if you open them up in PicasaWeb, they will show a little map in the bottom right hand corner. You can also open them all up in Google Earth.

I leave tomorrow to Germany to pick up my new BMW 135i for European Delivery.  I'll be driving around Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, and France.  I'm dropping my car off at the shipping handler in Nice, France in about a week.  I've spent the last few weeks testing photo equipment and I've gathered everything I think I'll need.  I was putting it all together today and thought it was funny how much equipment I'm actually bringing.  Below is a picture of some of the stuff that's going into my carry-on only luggage. 

As previously mentioned, I have created an even newer photography portfolio to display my work.  I was unsatisfied with AutoViewer and wanted a bunch of features that no one else had so I coded my own flash viewer over winter break.  I spent about 2 weeks straight working on it, so check it out!

www.photomaxwell.com

I have created a portfolio showing off my photography work.  Please view it here: http://www.maxwellkruger.com/photo. 

I created this about 3 weeks ago and am already working on a new version using a custom flash viewer that I'm writing.