Galaplanets

  Note: Clicking on any of the pictures below will enlarge them.

As you may or may not remember, I got a fisheye lens recently with the specific intent of creating little planet-style panoramas such as the three you can see below. These ones were shot in a different and slightly inferior manner in that they took dozens of smaller pictures to make rather than 7 or so fisheye pictures, and as such there is a lot more distortion in the ground and less sky. Still, they are neat representations of that wonderful and alien landscape.

 Above is the beach at Genovesa island, the last place we visited before returning to the mainland. You can see a frigatebird passing by in the sky and feel the heat coming off the sand. In the lower left there were people swimming with sea lions and the air around us was filled with the calls of nesting birds.

 Above is the top of a lookout near Dragon Hill on Santa Cruz where we had our first excursion. In the right side you can see Kathryn and Jean (our tour leader) scouring the distance for sings of cuckoos or other rare birds. We were at the end of our group and walking along the path that snakes in from the left and exits to the right.

And finally we have a visit to Sombrero Chino, a recent volcanic arrival there was barely any plant life beyond a few settler cacti and some hearty plants. To the lower right you can see the bay where we watched penguins swimming, and at the very bottom you can see the white dot of our boat waiting patiently in the bay for us while to the left the peak of the island raises up.