You will find each photo only once throughout the site, with few exceptions. Although some sections may overlap in content or time frame, you will not find any photos repeated, except maybe in panoramas or in Cast of Characters.

You can click on most of the small photos to get a larger image, both in physical size and often in content. When looking at the larger photo, be aware that Internet Explorer may resize the photo to fit your screen. The actual image may be much larger than your screen. To see the photo full-sized, move your mouse to the lower right of the photo and click the button that appears. Recommend you look at the full-sized image to get a truer feeling for the scale and detail of the area.

Reduced the size and compressed the images for downloading on the Internet. The original images and the images on the CD are much better quality. For example, reduced PICT0100.jpg from 912kb to 29kb, and PICT0100.jpg from 1,171kb to 73kb. Those are reductions of 15 to 30 times.

Left most images as they were so trip members can do what they want with the originals. In some cases retouched, lightened or cropped full-sized images. You can tell which pictures were altered by the "_a" following the name as in "PICT0037_a.jpg". Those with talent, feel free to correct lighting, coloring and whatever else and send me the improved images.

Panoramas are fun. Panoramas convey a sense of scale, a sense of being there that ordinary pictures miss.

Your mind creates the three-dimensional image you perceive. In a sense, what you see is a figment of your imagination. Your brain does not perceive the objects directly. The cones on your retina react to photons and send electrical signals to your brain. Similarly with your other senses, like hearing. Your brain assembles millions of signals and creates a model, an illusion, in your mind of the world about you.

We feel like what we see is objective reality, "seeing is believing", but what we see is our own skewed perception of reality. I tried to explain this to my girlfriend, or is it former girlfriend, but she did not see things my way.

Panoramas tease your mind with a greater sense of reality than a smaller picture. Panoramas are more than something to look at. They take you one-step closer to participating.

You will see, I like panoramas. I am not good at them. Three big problems are matching the lighting, matching the perspective and joining the photos without a seam. All the problems may be partially overcome with a graphics program and a lot of time. Camera adjustments can improve the lighting. Rotating the camera lens, or rather the image sensor, around a fixed point, possibly with the help of tripod, can help perspective.

Have retouched all panoramas in one way or another. Rarely do a series of side by side photos line up. Sometimes added background or foreground to fill out a scene. The alternative is to crop the image and cut out nice portions, or leave white spaces above and below various parts.

See www.panoguide.com for good information on panoramas.