Panorama Photo

Presenting a panorama from Brocken feels like a heavy task. It is such a prominent summit both in cultural and geographic terms. Only a small handful of mountains have earned their own danish names, and Brocken is one of them - in danish it is called Bloksbjerg. Every midsummer we "celebrate" (horrible tradition, actually) the burning of a witch, who will then fly to Bloksbjerg...In addition, the Harz has since the 60's been very popular as a travel-destination, but also resented by the "hip" segment of the Danes. Therefore, the Harz (as viewed by the Danes), is either wonderful or awful. Both segments seem to dwell on the timber framing buildingstyle. The Harz as a habitat, or a prominent mountain range, hasn't really dawned on the Danes. One of the first Danes to visit Brocken was the storyteller H. C. Andersen. Here is a short German citation of his impression:

"Hier bekam ich einen Begriff von einem nordischen Hünengrabe so recht im Grossen. Der Brocken ist ein solches. Stein liegt auf stein gehäuft und über dem ganzen ruht eine wunderbare Stille. Kein Vogel zwitschert in dem niedrigen Fichtengestrübb; rund umher wachsen weisse Grabesblumen in dem hohen Moose und überall liegen Steine massenweise zerstreut. Nun waren wir oben, aber alles war vom Nebel umhüllt. Wir standen in einer Wolke..."

Anyone who has been on Brocken will know, that it is not the easiest place to make a panorama. The summit doesn't really give a tiefblick to the north, is usually very crowded, and one must integrate various buildings in a pano. You can read more about that on Jörg Braukmanns #12886. I don't consider this a great pano, it is only relevant since there isn't really a summertime pano from here. Walter Schmidt has made a pano of the northern view, #5682.

I have now been here on 3 occasions, and everytime the view has been more or less the same: good, without being impressive. I have experienced both extreme winds and overcast, and nice and quiet weather. On this pano the farthest view is Meissner on a 82 km distance. I can just make it out in original size, but it is almost impossiple to separate from the horizon here. I have labelled it anyway.

I chose to climb the Gipfelstein, and try my luck from there. The good thing about a pano from here is, that you get a good impression of the summit area lying above the tree line. Also you avoid much of the crowd. As it turned out, many could be "cleared off" through masking. Maybe those still present may disturb, make a comment then.

Since I am not that familiar with the area, it may take some time to label the pano. Be patient!

Pano made from 23 pics (RAW), 50 mm, iso-100, 1/400 sec, f/8, developed in DPP (neutral, 5200K, moderate sharpness), stitched with PTgui, some masking in PTgui, a signpost, a binocular and some heads cloned away in GIMP, minor contrast correction in GIMP, re-scaling and sharpening in IrfanView.