Trip to Albuquerque

In October 2009 I attended the joint meeting of the IAPP and the IVRPA (International Association of Panoramic Photographers and International VR Photography Association) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was great fun and I enjoyed meeting people with obsessions similar to my own. I gave a talk entitled "Why 360-degree VR?"

Since Albuquerque is only a thousand or so miles from home, I decided to drive both ways and do a little photography on the way. I plotted a zig-zag course connecting up places I felt I needed panos of, either to fill in gaps in my coverage, or to replace ones that were old and/or not so good. I ended up taking 259 panoramas on the trip, and all but the last 50 or so are now finished and published on my website.

Southern Deserts and Cactus Country

My first day took me to Needles, where I frequently camp at Moapa Regional Park on the Colorado River. From there I crossed into Arizona and followed the river down through Lake Havasu City (home of London Bridge), the Parker Strip and the Colorado River Indian Reservation where I added another of the WWII Japanese Relocation camps to my list. I spent the night in another of my favorite camp areas, the "long term visitor area" for snowbirds at Quartzsite. I intended to laze around there for a day or two, but the wind picked up and made it impossible - everything from my hat to my flip-flops started blowing away!

Central Arizona

I relocated to a motel in Verde Valley, which has grown remarkably since I was last there, and the next day shot panos around the historic town of Prescott, formerly the territorial capital, and home to the excellent Smoki Museum. From there it was over the mountains to the old mining town of Jerome. The old Jerome High School has been converted to artists studios and galleries, a excellent idea and a most pleasant place. The picture I took of artist Mark Hemleben in his studio was the one I ended up using for my Best of 2009 on the World Wide Panorama site. Also in the Verde Valley I re-shot Tuzigoot and Montezuma Castle National Monuments.

Northern Arizona

After a surprisingly cold night camping near Flagstaff (down to 17 degrees), I revisited Sunset Crater National Monument, with its colorful volcanic cones and black lava flows. Heading east on Route 66 (now Interstate 40) I documented a stretch of the old road at Winona (scroll to the bottom of the Flagstaff page). Remember that line in the song - "Flagstaff Arizona, don't forget Winona"? It must have been for the rhyme, there has never been anything very memorable there. My last stop before the state line was Barringer Meteor Crater, truly one of the wonders of the world. It deserves to be a national monument, but remains in private hands, and I must say they do an excellent job of both preserving and protecting it. The next day was a straight shot into Albuquerque for the conference.

Pueblo Country

The conference was held during the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival. We had prime seats at the Gondola Club to view the sunset spectacle of the special shapes balloons, followed by the "Glowdeo" of balloons illuminated by the propane flames that provide their hot air. Unfortunately a traffic accident trapped me on the freeway the next morning and I missed the mass ascencion. Another activity at the conference was a trip on the aerial tram to the Sandia Crest.

I came down with a cold, or maybe flu, the last day of the conference, and spent most of the next four days in a cheap motel in Belen, New Mexico, staring at the ceiling. When I recovered I headed southeast to rephotograph the Salinas Pueblos National Monument, also known as "the cities that died of fear". First was Abo, thick walls of a ruined church with a pueblo around it and a kiva inside the cloister walls. Then Quarai, massive red sandstone ruins on a verdant hillside. Finally, a long drive east onto the plains, where Gran Quivira (also known as Las Humanas, crowns a low ridge with ash grey stone ruins, a Spanish pueblo village built on top of a radial prehistoric structure.

Southern New Mexico

Next I spent a day exploring east of the Rio Grande Valley to the Very Large Array radio-telescope complex on the Plains of San Augustin, then the old mining town of Magdalena. The railroad was built to here because of mines such as the Kelly Mine, and was the destination for massive cattle drives from the interior plains of New Mexico as recently as 1948. I explored historic Socorro, which was founded in 1598 by Don Juan de Onate, and that night I camped at Water Canyon in the Socorro Mountains, The next day I drove around Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge then headed back to Albuquerque Pueblo Country Again

There is a genuinely historic and interesting district known simply as Old Town surrounding the plaza in Albuquerque. My attempt to panograph other parts of the town was frustrated by a Sunday morning charity run event that had all the streets blocked. Instead I took a hike in the Rinconada Canyon section of Petroglyph National Monument, notable mostly for the extreme proximity of new development and a lot more joggers and dog walkers than petroglyphs. Next time I will go to the Boca Negra section, apparently much more impressive.

The rest of the day was spent at Bandelier National Monument, an amazing prehistoric site with traditional pueblos on the floor of Frijoles Cayon plus unique dwellings built into the soft volcanic rock of the canyon wall. The weather was perfect and it was swarming with people hiking the short trail and climbing up and down the ladders and in and out of the caves. On the way back I stopped at the Rio Grande viewpoint in White Rock near Los Alamos .

Starting home the next day I spent most of the day at El Malpais National Monument, where pale sandstone ciffs edge a huge black lava field. That night I enjoyed a bit of history by staying at the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup on old Route 66.

Northern Arizona Again

Just at the New Mexico-Arizona state line I headed north to Window Rock, the Navajo nation capital. Nearby is Hubbell Trading Post National Monument, managed by the National Park Service as a combination historic site and active trading post. From Hubbell I drove north to Chinle and shot a quick series of panos along the south rim of Canyon de Chelly, then spent the night in the lovely (free) campground located in a stand of cottonwood trees.

From Williams I went north to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. I have never been fond of the South Rim, too much development and too many people. It wasn't as bad as in mid-summer, but was still not, in my opinion, the optimal way to enjoy this wonder of the word (I recommend Toroweap if you want to really experience the Grand Canyon.)

I worked my way along the busiest stretch of the canyon rim, from Mather Point to Yavapai Point, the canyon rim lodges, Lookout House and Kolb's Studio, and Grand Canyon Village. Despite the grandeur and beauty of the views, it felt more like work than pleasure to me.

Southern Deserts Again

Back in California I headed northwest to the mining town of Trona on Searles Lake, then north up Owens Valley and home over Sonora Pass. There were some good fall colors along the east side of the Sierra, but I have not put them up yet.

Omnibus Update

When I made a careful survey of my site last December I discovered that I was about 1900 panoramas behind - panoramas taken and stitched but not finished and not yet put up on the site. So as soon as I completed the big QTVR to Flash conversion I started trying to catch up. As a result almost 400 new panoramas were added to this website the last week of January 2010.

First, some very old pictures, cubic panoramas that I shot in 2003-2004, before I had good software to stitch cubics. Some are of Yosemite and forests (where more of a view upwards is needed), others are of wildflowers (straight down needed). In all just over a hundred were finally finished as cubics. Most of these panos were already on the site in cylindrical form. If you look carefully you may discover you can now see to the tops of the cliffs and look down at the flowers in many places where before you couldn't.

The other new additions are scattered all around the site. I have been trying to finish off guidebooks or states where there were just a few pending images. Next I will start work on the really big blocks of panos that remain.

Oregon Coast

The northernmost redwoods, on the Chetco River near Brookings.

Black Hills and Badlands National Park

Everything I have for South Dakota is now on-line, a total of 77 images. These were added in late 2009, but never announced. It is a major geographic addition, including Mount Rushmore, Deadwood, herds of bison, Badlands National Park, and Wounded Knee.

Mount Shasta

Low water in Shasta Lake in 2008, a great contrast with two years earlier when the lake was full.

Mount Lassen

Burney Falls and Lake Britton on the Pit River.

Sacramento Valley

A reshoot of the Sundial Bridge in Redding, this time using spherical images.

Also riparian forest on the Sacramento River at Woodson Bridge near Corning.

Lake Tahoe and the Northern Sierra

Sutters Mill at Coloma, the original gold discovery site.

Marin County

Three hikes at Point Reyes National Seashore: Bear Valley, the Coast Trail at Miller Point, and Tomales Point.

Plus the hike and beach at Tennessee Valley in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

San Francisco

New spherical images of the San Francisco Civic Center.

San Francisco Bay Area

Winter hikes on Mount Diablo, and a few miles southeast of there at Morgan Territory Regional Park.

El Camino Real

Springtime pictures on the Parkfield Grade Road, at the town of Parkfield on the San Andreas Fault, and south along the San Andreas Rift Zone.

Yosemite

The Roosevelt Grove of giant sugar pines near Crane Flat.

A February snowstorm in Yosemite Valley: Discovery View, El Capitan Meadow, Leidig Meadow, Chapel Meadow, Cooks Meadow, Ahwahnee Meadow, and the Ahwahnee Hotel.

In August we took an overnight hike to the Vogelsang High Sierra Camp near Tuolumne Meadows.

Sequoia

More panoramas on snowshoes in Sequoia National Park: Wuksachi Lodge, the General Sherman Tree, the Congress Trail, Round Meadow and Giant Forest

On the same trip, but no snow (lower elevations) at Ash Mountain and Three Rivers.

East of the Sierra

Returning from the southwest in October 2009 I updated my coverage of the Bridgeport area , and saw some great fall color at Twin Lakes.

In October of 2008 I spent a wonderful day with the ancient bristlecone pines of the White Mountains. I started with the highest part of the Partriach Grove at around 11,000 feet, then the main Patriarch Grove on the flats below.

Also new panoramas along the White Mountain Road between the Patriarch and Schulman Groves, and south down to Westgard Pass.

In March 2009, on my way to Death Valley, I stopped north of Owens Lake to photograph a series of dust storms. But before I could get back to the car the wind shifted and I was completely engulfed in the swirling dust cloud.

I have also added a few additional panoramas of the Manzanar Japanese Relocation Camp.

Death Valley

In 2008 I shot a major series of panoramas covering Saline Valley, the most remote part of Death Valley National Park. There are 34 panoramas presented in six sections: the North Pass Road coming in from Big Pine; the lower main springs officially known as Saline Valley Warm Springs; the middle developed spring known as Palm Spring; the small and natural Upper Spring; the floor of Saline Valley with sand dunes and the salt playa; and the South Pass Road.

Santa Barbara

In March 2007 I took a few new panoramas of Carpinteria, and Ventura, including Mission San Buenaventura.

Los Angeles

Among the really old cubics that I finally finished - a tricky stitching problem finally overcome, and worth it - the Bonaventure Hotel on Bunker Hill.

Southern Deserts

I spent a pleasant morning at Zzyzx in the East Mojave National Preserve, shooting the Soda Springs Desert Studies Center.

On my way back from the conference in Albuquerque I photographed Trona, a vast chemical extraction site and company town located on the shore of Searles Dry Lake.

Northern Nevada

In late fall of 2008 I enjoyed a brief stay at Great Basin National Park, the least visited national park in the 48 states. A cross-section of Prometheus, the world's oldest tree until it was cut down, has been rescued from the casino in Ely, and can now be seen in the Great Basin Visitor Center in Baker.

Southern Nevada

For the World Wide Panorama event "Diversity" I paid a visit to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, home to the world's rarest fish, the Devils Hole pupfish.

The next day I photographed at popular Spring Mountain Ranch and Red Rock Canyon, west of Las Vegas

Canyonlands of Utah

I shot a long series of the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, Natural Bridges, and Captol Reef in early summer of 2008, and managed to get most of them up on the website by October. But another series shot on the same trip in the Canyon Rims Recreation Area, got overlooked until now. It consists of Anticline Overlook, the Hatch Point Road, and the Needles Overlook.

Northern Arizona

In October 2008 I revisited the Kaibab Plateau specifically for the fall colors, and also added some spherical views at the North Rim and Bright Angel Point.

Cactus Country, Southern Arizona

In December 2009 I spent a week in Tucson scouting for the International Panoramic Photography Conference. My business there was hotels, so I shot a series of panos of the Hilton Tucson East Hotel (where the conference will be held).

But I also managed to grab a few panos of the Mount Lemmon Highway, the Pima Air and Space Museum, and just a few from the Rincon Mountain unit of Saguaro National Park before a sand storm blew up.

I managed to add two entire new states to the website, Kansas and Missouri, photographed on my epic Oregon Trail trip of July 2008. I could (and should) have added a third, Iowa, but my time in Council Bluffs was too short and the weather too rainy.

Kansas

In Kansas I took just a few along the Oregon Trail and Pony Express route in the northeast corner: Hollenberg Station and Marysville; and Alcove Spring on the Big Blue River. Further south I enjoyed a brief stop at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.

Missouri

Missouri was my turn-around point on the Oregon Trail trip, as I only wanted to document the starting points for the emigrant trails along the east bank of the Missouri River at Saint Joseph and Independence.

Now that these bits and pieces are cleared away I can start in on some of the huge remaining blocks of panos that have been taken and stitched, but not finally prepared and added to the site. About 1100 panoramas to go!

• Two springtime trips in 2008 to the San Luis Obispo coast and El Camino Real in Monterey, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara counties. (about 120)
• My long Oregon Trail trip through Utah, Wyoming and Nebraska. (about 280)
• A summer trip to Portland, Salem and the Oregon coast. (80)
• Bryce Canyon, Cedar Breaks, and central Nevada on a cold autumn trip in 2008. (60)
• Two long series completing my coverage of Owens Valley. (about 100)
• Saratoga Spring at the south end of Death Valley and China Gardens on the Amargosa River. (70)
• A long backwoods driving and hiking trip in the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains of northern California. (about 70)
• Twice across Nevada: Carson City, Virginia City, Fort Churchill, Berlin-Icthyosaur, Angel Lake, and the California Trail. (70)
• Across central and northern Arizona on my way to and from a conference in Albuquerque, including the Grand Canyon. (about 80)
• Some major additions (including replacement of early work) for the Pueblo Country of northern New Mexico, and a few days in southern New Mexico. (100)

Conversion from QuickTime to Flash

[Not available yet]

Kauai - the Garden Isle

In May this year I was given a wonderful opportunity. My friends Bob and Evelyn Apte invited me to stay with them in their house at Princeville on the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i. Bob is an accomplished photographer and world traveler: you can enjoy the amazing collection of photographs on his site: Robert Apte's Eye Vue the World. Bob has been encouraging me in my photographic projects for several years now, and inspiring me by his example, both as a photographic artist, and as a person who knows how to live well. Bob is a bit camera-shy, but can be seen in the first of the panoramas at Queen's Bath.

I would like to dedicate the updated guidebook Kaua'i - the Garden Isle to Robert and Evelyn Apte, in gratitude for their friendship and support, and especially their generous hospitality at Princeville, which made this new edition possible. I spent an idyllic two weeks with them, shooting the glorious landscapes of Kaua'i each day, returning "home" each night to their companionhip (and Evelyn's home cooking).

By the way, if you are interested in visiting Kauai, the Apte's house is available for rent. It is located on the clifftops at Ali'i Kai in Princeville, on the beautiful north coast, and can be seen in three of my panoramas on the Princeville page. It is a very private single-story two bedroom unit, right on the clifftop, at the end of the road so there is no traffic. It has high speed internet, there is a swimming pool adjacent, and Princeville has everything you might need - library, post office, groceries, shopping and restaurants. Full details about renting are on this website.

I first visited Kauai in 1988, a ten day trip spent camping and hiking, including three memorable days on the Na Pali coast trail to Kalalau. I was shooting Kodachrome slides then (VR panoramas had not been invented) and got some great shots - I should digitize some and get them on the web. I returned to Kauai in March 1999 with my wife Nora and shot about 70 panoramas on negative film. Unfortunately, the time needed to scan all those negatives was more than I could manage, and only a dozen ever made it to my site.

This second edition of the Virtual Guidebook to Kauai - the Garden Isle consists entirely of new work, shot the first two weeks of May, 2009. I have replicated almost all the panos from my earlier trip and filled in most of the gaps in my geographic coverage. The weather was not ideal, many days were hazy or cloudy, but Hawaii is stunning in any light and I am very pleased with the 210 panoramas I obtained.

I have organized the panos in a clockwise series, starting at the end of the road at Ke'e on the north coast and wrapping around the east coast, south coast, west coast, and ending in the Alaka'i Swamp near the center of the island. There is a gap between the ends - the roadless Na Pali coast, which I did not have time to hike.

A few locations and subjects eluded me - I'll get them next time. The big one of course is the spectacular Kalalau Trail along the Na Pali coast cliffs, including the valleys at Hankapi'ai, Hanakoa, and Kalalau. I had planned to hike out onto the knife-edge ridges above the dry end of Na Pali, at Miloli'i and Awa'awapuhi, but after my nine-mile hike in Alaka'i Swamp the day before I just didn't have the energy. I also hoped to hike the east side and bottom of Waimea Canyon, but didn't have the time (or 4-wheel drive). If I could be reasonably sure of a clear day I would like to hike all the way across the Alaka'i Swamp to Kilohana, which overlooks the northeast coast.

Kapa'a has some nice narrow beaches and fine hotels I would like to document. I never got around to shooting the Kilohana Plantation house (Gaylord's Restaurant) or the Grove Farm Homestead historic site (which requires special permission). The St Regis Hotel in Princeville was closed during remodeling.

There are more beautiful beaches, coves, and coastal cliffs than I could cover on one trip, but I tried to get a reasonable selection. The ones I would like to add are Tunnels Beach (the premier snorkeling spot on the north coast), Secret Beach and Larsen's Beach in the north, the rest of the Maha'alepu beaches near Poipu, and Barking Sands between Kekaha and Polihale (which now requires security clearance because you must cross military land).

There are a few subjects I feel I did not do justice to. Wailua Falls is hard to see from behind the wall, so I should have hiked to the bottom (despite all the warning signs). I took a few panos in shallow water on various beaches, but next time I would like to get further out, perhaps in a kayak, and also try some underwater panos. There was almost no rain during this trip (very unusual for Kaua'i) so I missed the dramatic clouds, mist, and rainbows that are so much a part of the Hawai'ian scene.

Next - the Big Island. I don't know when, or how I can afford it, but I would love to re-photograph the Big Island of Hawai'i. My wife and I spent two full weeks there in January, 2000, making a strenuous effort to obtain comprehensive coverage - 164 panoramas. It was the last big project I shot on film, and very little of it ever got scanned (just 32 panos). I would go a little slower now, probably take three weeks, and replicate every single pano - but this time digital and spherical.

The "New" Virtual Guidebooks Site

Regular visitors to this site, if they have been watching carefully, might have detected some differences starting about the middle of February. In particular, all the state pages have new maps and the advertising has been redone.

In actuality, this is a completely new site, rebuilt from the ground up. It is intended to closely resemble the old site, retaining the look and feel, navigation, and of course content (the VR panoramas). But under the surface it is completely new.

The old site was begun in 1999 and coded in plain old html, using just a text editor (BBEdit). It grew steadily and I added features as well as content, and the look and feel evolved. But it was still being built with hand-crafted static html (mostly using Adobe GoLive). Making universal changes got increasingly difficult as the page count rose into the tens of thousands. It was also very arduous to add new content and ferret out errors.

So when I finished my last trip of the year in mid-October 2008 I decided it was time to start over and rebuild the site using up-to-date software. Primarily, this meant coding the pages in php, formatting them with CSS, and pulling the variable data from a MySQL database.

Since I had little experience with CSS and none at all with php/MySQL this involved a lot of learning and experimentation, not to mention a whole shelf of books. I am also very grateful to Markus Altendorff (of the WWP team) for his invaluable advice. It was fun making succesive breakthroughs - my first functional php page, my first successful database access, my first floating page design, and adding details that made for a more interactive interface.

Ironically, the new site has been coded almost entirely using BBEdit, back to the reliable tools that I started with.

I was tempted to go much further with the new opportunities presented by the dynamic page approach, but decided that getting the content back on line was most important. So I settled on a "brute force" method of accessing database info, where some variables are typed into the page, rather than extracted logically. This allowed me to start entering content and actually see some functional pages. By Christmas I had working versions of pages at all levels. The code behind them was horribly crude, but that can be fixed later.

The largest part of the job, though, has not been design or programming, but managing the data. First I had to do a thorough housecleaning of the site contents, organizing 7000 panoramas (each in two sizes) into folders within folders within folders, and regularizing the file names. This allowed me to implement a careful geographic restructuring, with provision for future expansion. At this time I also did triage to separate finished panos ready for publication from old not-so-good panos to be withdrawn, and new panos not yet ready. Generic pages were copied into the folders, ready to recieve their contents from the database, and the whole opus uploaded to the server (about 39,000 pages).

The descriptive data, which had previously been typed into multiple locations with minor variations (metadata, various lists, pano page captions) had to be captured from the old pages and massaged into the new database fields. At each level this got more arduous - 26 state pages (no big deal), 72 guidebook pages (a couple of days), 1915 locality pages (yikes!) and finally the agonizing drudgery of 7398 panorama pages. The pano page data is still not final - tweaking the fields for optimal results when used variously as metadata, captions, and on lists will be an ongoing project.

Several times I had to take a break from this huge task, for mental health and because I have other responsibilites. So during this time I also redrew the state page maps, set up the WWP Foundation, helped run the WWP's Best of 2008 event, gave a couple of public lectures ("A Virtual Tour of the National Parks" is my latest show), supervised a home repair project (that turned out to be much larger than expected), played around with Flash panoramas, and took time off for family Thanksgiving and Christmas. What I didn't do was travel, take new VR panoramas, or process any old ones. (One exception, a weekend trip to Yosemite during a snowstorm in February, too tempting to pass up!)

The final two stages of the site remake were tough. A high priority was to re-think my advertising strategy. First I had to get rid of the banners for defunct TravelPackets and the ancient Amazon banners. The navbars at all levels point to sections on Books, Prints and Posters, so I had to do a quick makeover of my books and posters sections. The third category, Prints, refers to art-quality prints of my own work, a project that I am very anxious to get started on (re-started, actually, see my earlier Blog article on prints). The banners across the top are now dedicated to Google AdSense, while the small square ads along the right side currently feature my own bookstores and lists. But in the future I may choose to sell this advertising space.

The second part of the final stage is problematic - writing introductory text for every state, guidebook and locality page. I think this is important, it makes the site more truly a series of guidebooks, telling you a bit about each area as well as showing you selected views. But the creative challenge of writing these short intros, one after another, has proved daunting. I did manage to provide something (not necessarily the final version) for each of the states and guidebooks by the time the site was released. But the locality text (arguably the most important, explaining each little cluster of images) has got me temporarily down for the count. To see what it will look like when finished (eventually), browse through Nevada, the only state with complete intro text at all levels (state, guidebook, locality).

On a humorous note, during the creation of the new site I used placeholder text, the standard "Lorem ipsum", so I could see how the text blocks would fit into the page design. My wife had never encountered this before and was really mystified to see all that Latin on my site! The dummy text has now all been removed, I think, but if you see some fragment of Latin remaining, now you know why.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Praesent commodo libero sed pede. Duis adipiscing libero consectetur neque. Nam eget lacus. Integer volutpat egestas lorem. Cras porttitor. Mauris pharetra turpis aliquam magna. See the Wikipedia article for more information on Lorem ipsum.

So what, specifically, is better about the new site?

error-free navigation - links and navbars are now created from the database

cleaner navigation, no separate fullscreen and standard locality pages

all panos are available in both standard and fullscreen sizes which open in new window

older and not-so-good panos no longer appear on the site

new introductory text on all state and guidebook pages - more like a real guidebook :-)

new introductory text on locality pages, appearing steadily as I write

new improved state page maps

tool-tips on all navbars and clickable maps

thumbnail maps on the navigation bars are clickable! - go to any state on the map with one click

almost all the top level pages (Help, About, How, etc.) have been rewritten and new ones have been added

there are context-sensitive ads (provided by Google) at the top of every non-pano page (please click them!)

a Google custom search box on every non-pano page

ads for my book lists and (potentially) other relevant items down the right side (non-pano pages)

an Amazon search box at the bottom of each column of book ads

updated and expanded book pages for every state

new and updated special book lists (waterfalls, California literature, notable authors)

updated poster pages (?)

new never-before-published panoramas of San Francisco, East Mojave, Canyonlands, and others

new panoramas (from summer 2008) will start appearing soon, the pages and database are all set up for them

future panoramas will appear on the site sooner after they are taken (once I catch up!)

Hopefully my next blog will be to introduce some major new sets of panoramas.

New and Old Panoramas - Missing in Action

In the year 2008 I set a new personal record for VR photography - I took 1377 panoramas in thirteen states. This expanded the scope of my site to include four new states (South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri) and filled in many gaps.

Usually I spend the fall and winter catching up on the photography that I did during the summer. But this year I kept traveling until mid-October, then started immediately on other projects (the new database-driven site and the WWP Foundation). So the new databased version of the site (launched mid-February) was missing about 900 panoramas taken in 2008.

Additionally, my new site policy is not to publish any panoramas for which I cannot present both standard and fullscreen versions. This immediately eliminates almost everything done on film, mostly taken before 2000. But also there were a few instances (as in Alaska) where I rushed to get standard size versions on the site, and never went back to make fullscreens. The bottom line is that I have removed almost a thousand older panoramas from the site, including most of Alaska and the northern parts of Canada.

My oldest panoramas, done on film, often now have historic value, and I would like to bring them back. Re-scanning the original negative film is a big task, though, so it may not get done completely, or soon. But many panos that I took toward the end of the film era have good scans and it will be fairly easy to re-make them and get them back on the site - all the code is already there in the pages, it is just commented out.

If I bring back a whole batch of old VR's I will mention it in this blog, especially if it restores or completes an entire section. First and easiest to do will be Northern British Columbia, the Yukon and Northwest Territories, then Alaska. After that it gets problematic, with panos scattered throughout the site, and some of them not worth the effort to reprocess (many of them have subsequently been re-photographed).

Similarly, each time I finish up with a group of new panos I will announce it here. I look forward to posting some great new views of Utah, Nebraska and South Dakota from my Oregon Trail trip (taken in July 2008); the redwoods, Oregon coast and Portland from my Oregon Coast trip (August); and Bryce Canyon, Great Basin National Park, the White Mountains, and Owens Valley from my Fall Color trip (October).

My immediate priority, though, is not to rebuild the older parts of the site, but to get back out on the road and take more pictures!

Big Changes Ahead for Virtual Guidebooks

I haven't posted to this blog in six months and people have asked whether I am still actively developing the site. The answer is yes, emphatically YES, Don Bain's Virtual Guidebooks will be growing and evolving faster than ever in the next year! Let me catch up now with news and plans for the future.

First, a very major change in my life. After a year of increasing dissatisfation I left my job at the University of California (after 22 years), effective July 1. The new Geography department chairman's idea of what my job should be was completely different than mine, and was unacceptable to me. So I quit. Technically, I retired, so I have a guaranteed income and benefits - but the wonderful thing is that now I have full time to devote to my other projects.

Of course the first thing I did with my new freedom was to hit the road. Since April (when I made the decision and started using up vacation time) I have taken six long photography trips, which I will describe below. I plan to stay at home during November and December (just a few short trips) to catch up on the pictures I have taken, develop the web site, and reinvigorate the World Wide Panorama.

Soon after I left the university the department chair broke his promise to continue to sponsor the World Wide Panorama by providing a free server. It was not too much of a surprise -- he hadn't kept his other promises either, and we were prepared. Landis Bennett and I (co-founders of the WWP) had already set up a non-profit corporation, the World Wide Panorama Foundation, to take over responsibility for the project. There is a lot of work to be done, but I see a bright future for this international collaboration and showcase for VR photography. The first appearance of the new WWP will be the "Best of 2008" event, appearing January 1, 2009.

The trips I have been taking will add almost a thousand new VR panoramas to the Virtual Guidebooks site. But before I sketch out where I went and what I saw, let me mention the behind-the-scenes changes being made to the site.

When I initiated Virtual Guidebooks in late 1999 all I knew was html, so the site was built that way. It got less and less reasonable to maintain in this form (handcrafted static html pages) as it grew to a thousand panoramas, then two thousand, then I added fullscreen versions, and growth continued to its present 6000. The result has been increasing lag time in getting new panoramas up on the site, a lack of flexibilty in page design and contents, and an awful lot of work to make changes or additions.

The modern solution of course is to convert to a database-driven model. So I am currently creating a whole new version of the site with PHP and MySQL, learning as I go. It is slow and at times tedious, but also interesting -- and every bit of progress is exciting. I dare not predict when the project will be complete, or even whether the conversion will be in stages or all at once. But I will discuss it in some future blog post.

Spring Break in March, when I was still acting like an employee, was spent mostly in the Mojave Desert. No special wildflower displays this year, but it gave me a very welcome chance to think about my future, and escape from the unpleasant situation developing at work. Expect over a hundred new panos of East Mojave National Preserve, Laughlin and Oatman on the Colorado River, and Valley of Fire State Park near Las Vegas.

I managed another week-long trip in late April, catching the end of wildflower season in the South Coast Ranges and revisiting areas along the central coast and El Camino Real in Monterey, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara counties. An easy, pleasant trip, with time to work on some new techniques. Another hundred new panos.

I took off half of May for a long trip through the spectacular parklands of the Colorado Plateau in Utah - Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, Natural Bridges, and the Kolob Canyons of Zion. I took about 150 panoramas, most of which are finished but will probably not be posted to the site until the big database project is further along.

My most ambitous trip, one I have been planning for a long time, took most of the month of July. I followed the Oregon Trail eastwards (i.e. backwards) from Salt Lake City all the way to Independence, Missouri, focusing on history and rural landscapes. This was mostly new country for me, including nearly two weeks in Nebraska. I liked it a lot, but let me warn you that camping there in the summer requires an air-conditioned motorhome with screened windows!

Actually, I was following the intertwined routes of the Oregon Trail, Mormon Trail, California Trail, the original transcontinental railroad, and the Pony Express. I saw a lot of old wagon ruts, many modest frontier buildings, scenery that was less spectacular than further west, very nice small towns and just two cities (Omaha and Salt Lake). On the way back I toured the Black Hills of South Dakota, another state new to me. In all I shot almost 400 panoramas!

I took barely a week to recover then headed north for the last trip of the summer. First a few days in Redwood National Park (one of my very favorite places), then up the Oregon Coast and inland to Portland. Another 150 panos.

Most of September slipped by while I was distracted with health issues, a major home repair project and similar mundane concerns. But I managed one more trip, a mid-October quest for fall color.

I have been to Zion Canyon when it was just unbelievable - in addition to the always-colorful sandstone, there were brilliant yellow cottonwoods and aspen, orange Gambel oaks and red canyon maples. So I headed for Utah. But I found everything still green in Zion, too early by almost a month, and the aspens at Cedar Breaks already bare, a week too late.

It was a great trip nevertheless. In addition to Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks I spent a day at Great Basin National Park in Nevada, hiking in the bristlecone pine forest at 10,000 feet, then drove diagonally across the sparsely inhabited heart of Nevada from Ely to Tonopah. Finally three days in Owens Valley (with some fall color) and a day in the White Mountains shooting still more ancient bristlecone pines.

So keep checking this blog and this site for major changes. My goal is to have the databased version of Virtual Guidebooks launched and all this summer's panos up by the end of 2008.