The origins of Switzerland

Every year on August 1st, Switzerland celebrates its national day with festivities around the country. This year, we had the opportunity to attend the festivities in Brunnen, a town on Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstättersee) a beautiful lake in Central Switzerland. The location is also historically signficant as it is near a mountain meadow called Rütli, where the legendary oath of Rütlischwur took place which was the start of the independence of Switzerland and goes back to the 14th century.

The annual fireworks are attended by thousands of people, many viewing the spectacle from the shore and others from boats on the lake. A flotilla of large boats travel from surrounding towns and cities, including Lucerne, to see the fireworks.

The weather on August 1st was beautiful this year. This photo was taken around 20:30 and shows the last rays of sunset hitting the surrounding mountains and showing a beautiful sunset over the lake:

Last rays of sunshine hitting the mountains around Brunnen, Switzerland.

Click on the image to see a larger version of this panorama or have a look at the interactive 360 panorama version of this photo:

Before the fireworks, I took the opportunity to take a photo over the lake at dusk:

Dusk in Brunnen right before the fireworks

Click on the image to see a larger version of this panorama or explore the panorama in more detail on this 360 panorama version of this photo:

And then, finally, there were the fireworks themselves. The picture below does not do it justice, but gives you a flavor of the experience:

1. August Fireworks above Brunnen, Switzerland

You can look at a larger version of this image by clicking on the image or interact with the interactive 360 panorama below:

Züri Fäscht 2013

The Züri Fäscht festival is a large event that is organized every three years in Zurich, Switzerland and attracts millions of people. There are many activities taking place throughout the city during the festival. The 2013 event took place July 5-7 in sunny and warm weather attracting many festivalgoers. For the first time, we were amongst the visitors of this festival.

The highlight of the festival were the fireworks on Saturday night, which were spectacular and included a helicopter shooting off fireworks from the air during the ground fireworks and parachutists jumping from a plane. Unfortunately, it was hard to find a good spot to see the fireworks as it was extremely crowded.

You can find some photos we took at the festival here, including some of the fireworks shot.

Photo Album Zurich Faescht

We also took a panorama that shows the trampolin show “second Life” by the Belgian group Criq’ulation Locale. The show includes jugling, trampoline jumping and acrobatics on a floating pontoon.

Christmas lightning in Zug, Switzerland

Every year, at Christmas time, Metalli mall in the center of Zug, Switzerland, is elaborately decorated with Christmas lights, special lightning effects, temporary structures and decorations.

These two panorama images show some of the lightning in the mall. Click and drag across the interactive version to move around the images.

Panorama:

Zug Metalli Christmas lighting

Interactive version:

Panorama:

Zug Metalli Christmas lighting

Interactive version:

King Albert 2 visits Switzerland

On 29th of August 2010, King Albert 2 of Belgium visited the Astrid Chapel in Küssnacht Am Rigi in commemoration of his mother, Queen Astrid. We had the opportunity to attend this occasion and created a Virtual Reality Panorama of the event. A Virtual Reality panorama allows you to look around in all directions, so you can explore the surroundings. In this case, I created a composite panorama that contains three separate events that happened during King Albert 2’s visit: His arrival at the Chapel, the greeting of the invited guests and the attendance of the mass. As such, by looking at the panorama, you can experience the visit as if you were there.

King Albert II visit to the Astrid Chappel in Küssnacht, Switzerland

You can have a look at theinteractive image below:

June 19, 2010 by admin

Huge picture of Zug!

We took up a new type of photography. It is called “Gigapan” and involves taking very high resolution images. The way we do this is by taking hundreds of images of an area and then stitching those together into one large image. We use a special device/robot that takes all the photos in such a way so they all stitch together nicely.

The most difficult part of the process is setting up the camera to take the gigapan. In order to get a good result, you need to set everything manually: timing, aperture, focus, whitebalance, etc. Depth of Field also becomes a huge concern as you want to make sure everything in the picture is sharp.

Anyway, I don’t want to bore your with the technical details, but I thought you might enjoy one of our Gigapans. We took this one a few weeks ago on basically a “perfect day” in Zug. It was sunny and very clear and we went up the little mountain next to Zug, called Zugerberg to get a good view of the city of Zug. In this view, you see Zugerlake, Zug, Cham, Baar, Steinhausen and the many surrounding villages around Zug.

You can zoom in and out of the gigapan and look at many details within the photo. You can also click on some of the “snapshots” underneath if you want to go directly to one of the selected details within the photo. Click here ot on the photo to open up the gigapan in a new window. Enjoy exploring Zug!

Zugerberg – our best immersive photo yet!

Next to Zug is a small mountain called Zugerberg (“Zugermountain”). A few weeks ago, we managed to visit it at exactly the right time when the sun was setting over the nearby mountains. Here are some photos and a 360 immersive panorama.

Click on any of the photos to see a larger version:

Sunset on Zugerberg

You can look around this 360 panorama by clicking on the image below and using your mouse to look around:

More immersiveness: Cham waterfront

Here is another 360 panorama we took a few weeks ago at the waterfront in Cham, Switzerland. Cham is a small town next to Zug which also borders on Zuger lake.

Cham waterfront in winter

Below is the interactive version of the panorama:

March 14, 2010 by admin

Winter photos from Prague

We visited Prague for a few days in the middle of December. It was cold (-12C/10F) for wandering around the city, but the dusting of snow created some great photo opportunities. Have a look at some of the photo’s from the trip here.

Our first immersive panorama: Zug Station

We started something new that we are very excited about and are now taking full 360×180 degree panorama’s. These are high-resolution panorama pictures in which you can rotate in all different directions, so you can look around, to the top or to the bottom and can fully experience a place.

Our first successful attempt to doing this was the local train station, which came out well. Below you can see the “flattened” panorama showing a full 360 degree view of the station.

Zug Bahnhof panorama

You can also have a “spin” with the below picture. More to come in the near future!

Skiing on the little nearby hill

Yesterday, I went skiing at the closest “decent” place to go skiing, which is Stoos. There are a couple of places closer to Zug, such as Rigi, but these places tend to be very small ski-areas and not really of any interest to me, so Stoos, with a height of 1922m (6305 feet) really is the local hill for skiing purposes. By public transport, it takes a bit over an hour to get there from where we live.

Conditions for ski-ing were fabulous: there has been tons of snow over the last few weeks, the sun was shining and the skiresort was not too crowded. Although the sun was shining on the ski-slopes, there was a thick fog in the valley, as is so often the case around here, creating some really nice views with peaks sticking out through the clouds.

Although pictures do not fully do the views justice, here are a few images for your enjoyment. As always, click on the images for larger versions:

View from Fronalpstock: