Little Planets

My friend Tony posted an interesting image this morning that used a technique I had not seen before.  In a nutshell, it takes an ordinary image and turns it into a "little planet".  Tony was kind enough to share a link with a tutorial on how the effect is achieved.  The process is actually pretty simple, the tricky part is using the right image.  I tried this with a bunch of images and got varrying results.  Here's a few of the good ones.  (No, you can't see the bad ones)

This first one is created from a single image that was taken on Lover's Beach in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico earlier this year.

This is a single light painting image.  More of a sea shell feel to this one.

This is a single image of New York City, taken from the top of Rockefeller Center.

This is the view looking North, towards Central Park.

Another view from Rockefeller Center, this time looking South.

I love how the Empire State Building stands out.

This one was created from a 9 image, 360° panoramic image taken on top of an old gun bunker at Ft Tilden in New York.

This image of San Francisco was created using the panoramic banner image at the top of my blog.