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Theme: "Crowds"

[Clicking on the photo will download the full panoramic image (1 meg.), Fig. N is the (recommended) 2-meg version of this image, twelve full screens full of people. We note that Mr. Jennings has suffixed these two versions with "-sm" and "-smsm", implying the existence of a '-lg" that could be printed out and used to wallpaper a room, so that you'd never feel lonely again.]

Notes by Craig Jennings: At the end of the rally [ed. note: see yesterday's NYCJPG], people dispersed more or less calmly from Washington Square Park. This was taken before the widely reported skirmish with the police. Some of my final shots show cops on horses massing at a corner of the square, and a large number of police apparently leaving the area on foot -- they must have come back later.

There were many more NYU students there than were represented in the general march, which was much more diverse. I think the oldsters are mostly sitting down, and get lost in the picture.

Nikon Coolpix 5000, pan with cramping arms. 17-photo composite, assembled with Canon Photostitch.

The trick about doing a 360 without a tripod is to pretend you are the tripod, and keep the arms at a fixed height. One photo that is vertically out of sync with the rest will ruin the series. Crowds doing what they do best (moving), the stitching couldn't be hidden -- there are a number of individuals phasing in/out and distorting.

This is actually a "360+" -- I wanted to be certain to do a full circle, and wound up (literally) doing a little more. On the right end, a woman has sat down for a smoke in what was the space between the two couples on the left end. Look for the many examples of "doubles" and even "triples" in this picture, moving left to right -- people who were walking to the right as I was panning right.

One of the visualizations we were given in high school physics (OK, this is off-topic!) was to imagine time as a "third" instead of fourth dimension. In this scenario, a planet orbited the sun in two dimensions as a circle. Time made it into a vertical helix, and the planet never came back to the same point. Well, that's what taking 17 pictures in a circle reminds me of; even if you make them all line up, it's still later than when you started.