Australian Mark Fennell’s love for adventure and nature, and his predilection for traveling to some of the more offbeat spots in the world - along with a knack for telling funny anecdotal tales while giving the reader a dose of adrenaline – is thoughtfully catalogued on his website, www.markfennell.com, which comes complete with an innovative geo interface and hi-res streaming Flash topographical maps to support his panoramas (PT Viewer format), videos and musings.
click here to open World Viewer
What sets this site apart is Fennell’s use of different media ( watch his Arctika video) and the strong and engaging personality that comes through loud and clear in his commentary. Below is just a sampling of what the site has to offer:
Tasmania
Fennell and his intrepid group set out for the bush walking mecca Vanishing Falls, deep in the wilds of southwest Tasmania. Although they never actually reach their destination they had fun, or what sounds more like hell to most, trying. Slashing their way through dense scrub, brush and trees, contorting their bodies through ‘midget holes’, in and out of ‘bear traps’ and trying to minimize RBGs (rapid branch groin contact) and rude slaps doled out by trees as karmic revenge to the trespassers. Fennell writes, “ Bashing through the scrub results in a few branches being broken, and in some unspoken language the trees know of the peril of their fallen brethren. Rude slaps, or even very rude slaps to the face from branches out of nowhere, collapsing trees and numerous falls. Jen, our resident ‘mine sweeper’, managed to find every single midget hole and bear trap – easily taking a hundred falls (she counted) and some worry as to whether her coccyx had broken”.
Easter Island
Plunked in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from anywhere, the mystery of the Moai – the large stone statues that populate the island – has long entranced the imagination of travelers. The statues are scattered throughout the island and range in size from two to thirty meters. According to oral histories the Moai represent chiefs, priests and leaders, and they all face inland to protect their clan. Production of the statues was at its peak around 700 AD. Weighing up to 20+ tonnes, they were carved out of the rock face and somehow slid down the hill, undamaged, to their final destinations. There is nothing else like them in this world.
“They call it the navel of the world (Te Pito o Te Henua), stuck in the middle of a great ocean paunch collecting an assortment of local, touristic and archaeological lint. Huge statues stand like silent sentinels, and windswept shores of hot black bubbled rock bake in the sun. The ocean blooms in towering sprays, and hidden away palm brimmed beaches lull serene excursions,” Fennell writes.
North Pole
Mark’s riveting account of his trip to the North Pole, where 10 of his party of 14 contracted frostbite walking seven hours a day pulling 100 lbs sleds, is also captured on video: “ -30 outside and our first taste of the arctic. White, cold, and stunning. This is the craziest place on earth. Broken ice between here and the pole necessitated a chopper drop off, and loading a MI8 helicopter we flew to our drop off point 89.3 degrees north. We felt like commandos on a mission. Setting up camp, we spent our first night on ice. The trip to the pole had begun; seven days of cross-country skiing lay in front of us. “
Mark Fennell is a Sydney-based graphic designer who also created one of the largest design resources for Flash developers on the web, www.flashkit.com . He says it’s part of Australian culture to disappear around the planet for months or even years at a time.
Images were taken on a Canon Ixus digital camera. Each panorama consists of about 14 shots. The images were then combined using Canon Photostitch software. The World map is the Blue Marble Image from NASA. The Source files used in this map are 1 pixel per kilometer! The world is broken into eastern and western hemispheres and projection is Plate Curee (lat/long). The Flash map viewer is based on the excellent Zoomify software, allowing massive images to be viewed in fast loading tiles. (A big thanks to Dave Urbanic for his help!) The Panorama viewer is a Java applet developed by Helmet Dersh. It also includes stitching software.
