[Zig]

OK, OK, as this is a downsampling of a 30mp composite I can only remotely justify this as a"snap", yet in its web-ready form it works for me as a means of showing you my locale.
The crested hill on the left is Doverow Hill, the reverse slope of which is my house which I call Castle Zig.
The one on the right is part of Standish Woods and was last year full of the sounds of 2 scampering terriers who are not unknown on these boards.
The pic is taken from Rodborough Hill, and the houses you see are the "villages" of Ebley and Rodborough, which are considered as part of Stroud town.
You'll be able to pick out 18th century mill buildings, as Stroud rose on the backs of wool, weavers, then became industrialised in the industrial revolution, as canals were built from around 40 years before America's independence.
These mills made the red cloth for all the soldiers of the old empire. The famous Wolff of Quebec infamy, before his red-bedecked soldiers went abroad, once bloodily supressed a riot here: the weavers were trashed because of the industrialisation of their product, then rioted. Wolff and his soldiers, wearing the very cloth made by Stroud, proceeded to quell the rioters.
Charles Mason(who teamed up with Jeremiah Dixon and surveyed the Mason-Dixon line) came from here; in fact he met his first wife Rebekkah not far from the hill on the right.
I have a dream of hang-gliding from this vantage-point all the way home to Doverow Hill one day

[adam]

woah, that's a big big picture, I mean, contains heaps of things :O
Really like a snapshot of history, like a map, showing everywhere :O!
You stitched it alltogether?
cool.

[Zig]

Ta Adam; yes, a collection of overlappers taken with my Tamron 90mm and stitched with PTGui to form an elephantine tif; the width after some cropping was around 7000+ pixels.

[Petographer]

Excellent story Zig. I'm very glad I read this. It is good to se your stomping grounds.

[Irma]

You live in a beautiful place Zig... and so green at this time of the year...
Your picture is great!

[shuttertalk]

Whee! What beautiful countryside! Could you post a 100% crop? I'd like to see how much detail you have in those files!

If you ever do hang glide home, make sure you bring your camera with you!

[Zig]

Many thanks. Jules, (I think I've done this properly) here's a 100% crop of the church about 2 miles away.

[Zig]

...and another of the mill building by the canal, that you see on the left of the pic:

[shuttertalk]

Cool! Hey you might want to play around with Zoomify - it's a utility which splits up large files into small portions for optimal web viewing, via a flash applet. You can pan and zoom, and is perfect for the stuff you're doing... free too.

[Zig]

Ta Jules; I had a look at it but was put off by the words "flash" and "applet". And "zoomify" too, it has to be said. (arf!) (How do you know all this stuff and run a site and go to work! Amazing!)