is worth a thousand words:
The full sized version of this is nine megapixels across, and about one and a half megapixels high. It was shot from the porch of the western gate, looking out over the garden and reflecting pool, using a 5.1 megapixel Sony Cybershot. I took about 32 separate images and tiled them together to produce this single image. The version you’ll see if you click on the above image is 2048 pixels wide. Sorry, but I can’t let you download the huge one from my server and have any bandwidth left for myself.
What you’re looking at here is a one-hundred-eighty degree view; you can see the red walls of the western gate on either edge. The tiny dots at the base of the Taj Mahal itself are people. This was taken at about 10AM local time.
It’s hard to describe how I felt when I saw this for the first time. The Taj Mahal is something I’d heard of all my life, and to see it this way – what you’re looking at is what I saw coming through the western gate – nothing I can think of to say really conveys how I felt at that moment. It was a moment of grandeur, of sheer awe. It truly is one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, and it is more beautiful to see in person than any photograph could ever possibly convey.
– Gene Turnbow
