A selection of a dozen panorama photos taken during various travels around the world – from Bolivia, Brasil, and Perú in South America to the Netherlands and Belgium in Europe to Japan – and closer to home.
Bolivia, 2010
Heading north out of La Paz into the South Yungas – the dirt road to the left of center/middle is one end of the Bolivian road of death. The paved road carries most traffic these days, but it ends before Caranavi and the rest of the journey down/through the mountains is along the – often very scary – road of death.
Perú, 2013
Taken near sunset in the hills SW of downtown Tingo Maria overlooking the Rio Huallaga. I was a guest of the Salon del Cacao y Chocolate and took part in La Ruta del Cacao – where a group of international guests visited a number of farms, co-ops, and factories. One memorable aspect of this trip was that our flight from Lima was canceled and we were forced to take an overnight (fourteen-hour) bus ride. An adventure of its own.
Netherlands, 2015
Amsterdam, deep dusk. Taken on the Damrak. To the far left is the Beurs van Berlage and to the right is the Dam Square – the bright vertical obelisk-like thing to the right of center is the Obelisk in the Dam.
Nicaragua, 2015
The long walk back after visiting the farm in La Dalia where the mother trees for Ingemann can be found. Hilly terrain, not all of it this green. I was in Nicaragua for Ingemann’s Academia de Cacao, which I helped create, organize, and lead.
Paris, 2016
The interior of A l’Etoile d’Or. Easily my favorite chocolate shop in Paris and probably my favorite chocolate shop in the entire world. A definite must-visit every time I am in Paris.
Brasil, 2017
Ilhéus harbor. I was in Brasil as a guest speaker for the Chocolat Bahia festival.
The Fazenda Sagarana. The modeling of light is natural – clouds covering the sun.
Shanghai, 2017
I was in Shangai for the global launch of Ruby. Hot, hukmid, and smoggy outdoors, the view across the Bund toward the iconic Pearl radio tower from the pool deck of the W caught my eye.
San Francisco, 2019
I traveled to San Francisco for the global launch of BC’s Wholefruit product line in September. Before breakfast and before the start of any formal activities I took a walk to the water. Though I missed the sunrise, the view across the bay with the Golden Gate bridge on the right was pretty spectacular. September is known for being one of the wettest/coldest months of the year in the area – fortunately not that morning.
Tokyo, 2020
Shibuya Crossing from street level. This is an iconic location, one of the busiest (if not the busiest) pedestrian intersection in the world. Normally shown in an overhead/aerial shot. Quiet now.
While in Tokyo I took the opportunity to visit Green Bean to Bar – one of the excellent specialty chocolate makers now working in Japan. This is a lovely shop that includes an open workshop where they make many things besides chocolate bars.
Brussels, 2020
I was in Europe in Feb/Mar visiting Amsterdam, Finland, France, and Belgium before returning to New York just as lockdowns and travel bans were being implemented. This is a photo taken near the Grand Place with the Mannekin Pis right of center. There is an astonishing number of chocolate shops within a five-minute walk of my vantage point, including multiple Godiva locations.
Production Notes
All of the photos were taken by me on a iPhone – various models up to an including an iPhone 11Pro. One thing I see is a real improvement in the software used to process the panoramas in the phone. This can especially be seen in the sky in the pano taken in Perù in 2013. The banding may be due to inconsistently rotating the camera during the exposure.
All of the images were imported into LuminarAI for color enhancement and noise reduction where it seemed needed. The images were then opened in Photoshop Elements (2015) where they were resized to the same width (1920 pixels) before saving as JPEGs. I varied the amount of compression to get a file size around 700kb.
The featured image was produced using the same tools. After resizing the two photos to 1920 pixels wide, I created a composite and then cropped the resulting image to 1080 pixels, which is an aspect ratio of 16:9 (HD video).
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