Michael Nichols/National GeographicIt really excites me that people are out there coming up with new techniques for photographing difficult subjects. It excites me even more that National Geographic has it in their budget.

Over on the right you see a photograph taken by Michael “Nick� Nichols (and his team) for National Geographic, which is on the cover (well, part of it is on the cover, it’s a huge photograph) of the October issue of the magazine.

The image was made by jigsawing 83 separate photographs together (which you can probably tell by the jagged edges), each of which was taken by one of three DSLR cameras mounted on a gyroscope-leveled, pulley-lowered rig that Nichols and his team designed for the purpose. You can check out the photo on Hack a Day of Nichols with his rig; it looks like they’ve got six Pocket Wizards on there (I don’t know what the other three are for) and maybe a couple of bicycle wheels. All in all, a very righteous hack.

This particular redwood is allegedly the “most architecturally interesting� tree in the world, with several forks and bends stretching 300 feet into the sky. It’s only been standing there for over 1,500 years(!!), but now it has been recorded in the annals of photographic history forever.

Via (one of my favorite blogs) Hack a Day via National Geographic via NPR