Staggering photograph, truly awesome. I spent quite a bit of time exploring this image, the amount of information here is incredible. Thanks!

You can even see the tunnel to the top part of the path on wayna picchu.

It is hard for mere words to describe the beauty of this photo. Thank you for sharing it with us. Sincerely, Walt

Thanks for all the nice comments ! I think I have found 4 people in the picture somewhere. Sometimes I come back to this page and explore Machu Picchu all over again. Its a lot of fun to zoom around, but you need a fast connection.

Anyone know of anyway to download that image? It may be obvious and it may be a very stupid question but i would love to have that image on my computer! If you know a way please email it to me (the method, not the image as i imagine it is quite big!) at --removed-- Thanks

This image is extremely large for once and secondly you should not download the image without asking for my permission as this would be a violation fo my copyright. This image is somewhere around 30,000 pixels wide, which would be far too much for a wallpaper. Actually some computers have trouble displaying it as a whole due to its size. It uses close to 1GB of ram to display.

Please do not attempt to download this picture, as I will otherwise have to take it off this website. It is only there for viewing. If there is enough interest, I can have a wallpaper of this in the wallpapers section for free download.

It was only after posting the comment that i realised this whole site was yours, i just thought it was somewhere to post images. If you could do a wallpaper of it it would be great! And that is one huge image!! Sorry, again!

No hard feelings. I will take care of the wallpaper as soon as I get time.

wow..thanks for taking the time to not only get to the place to take the picture, but for sharing it! It's amazing..

It's my pleasure. Thats what I like to do anyways. Glad you liked it.

how did you take this picture?? i mean, with what photographic equipment? it is amazing!!!

I took an ordinary digital Camera (Canon 20D) and a tripod. The technique is described in my Ultra High Resolution Image Tutorial.

I have yet to see an image with more detail and functionalty as this image. I never thought one person could spend so much time viewing and studying a single photo. You must have had an expensive and extremely high pixeled camera, I would say at least "300 megapixel". Good job whom ever you are. I am impressed, maybe you could come to my country, Cuba, and set up a photo like this of my magnificent Palace. And post it on My "Official" government website. I will pay you with many fine Cuban Cigar's. Thank you, Fidel "The Big Papi" Castro

Well Fidel, I guess age has finally caught up with you.
Maybe you would like to read the post just before yours?

While your work IS beautiful, I'm fairly certain it is not a violation of your copyright to simply download it to one's hard drive, provided one does not try to redistribute it as his or her own work or attempt to sell it. That said, great photo.

Hi, may I ask how you've created that image? Did you take several Images and combine them to one big image somehow?

Ronny, I have a tutorial on Ultra High Resolution Images online.

That is amazing! Words really do fail to describe it. Where exactly were you standing to take that? A mountain? In the air? I'd love a wallpaper of that. Nothing better than looking at such beauty after staring at lines of txt and white space O.o

brillant photo, can you please release the full size image or email it to me, what size is mb is the full size picture?

is there a link were i can download the full image, what size is it in mb ? or email it to me ?

The image is about 200MB. The flash creator software has shrunk it to around 56MB, but you can clearly see artefacts now.
Either way, what is the purpose of requesting the file from me?
If you want to discuss licensing options, you can contact me through the contacts page.

We were in Machu Picchu in late March 2006 and this image just brings me back! Thank you for sharing this wonderful image and for the feelings it brings with it!

Thanks for the picture. My daughter and friends are hiking up there and it is wonderful to see where they are going and why

Hopefully this picture can show you why people would like to go there. For me there is no other place like it on earth. It was my ultimate travel destination and will be impossible to top.

THIS is truly amazing. You have brought something beautiful to a lot of people.

Cheers,
BRM

EXCELLENT!!!

maravilloso no?

gracias yenifer !

Esta muy weno.. feliitaciones!!!

Hello I found this link on videotrip.eu, it's really great!

Hi there, well all the superlatives have been consumed by previous contributors and really all i would like to do is to say that i think this is one of the most interesting and rediculously detailed/functional images that i have come across. It truly allows an amazing degree of study before getting there - i will be there in 3 weeks. Many thanks my man - perhaps another ancient site could be addressed in this fashion?. PMC

incredibile... voglio stà macchina

Great job. Thank you for sharing a great photgraph with the zoom functionality. It does justice to those ancient but incredible Inca engineers & 'artists'. Ps: Could locate 2 of the 4 people you mentioned. Both sitting, one with a cap the other with blue pullover. Thanks once again!! Shaun

hi im from norway and macchu picchu is my dream holyday,thanks for posting this great photo of the worlds 8 wonder.did you take the inca trail to the top or the bus?and is it posible to spend the night ther in a sleeping bag?youst wondering.but thanks so very much again keep it up.thomas claudius from norway.

Oh man. I had just written a long response to your question Thomas, when I noticed that the links below the picture didn't work and I fixed those but lost the answer. Here is the short version (you can always get more information by following the links that lead to the travel guides (below the picture)): I didn't go on the trail for fear of altitude problems. Turns out I had absolutely no issue, but I couldn't change my mind since you need to make reservations far ahead. You cannot spend the night in a sleeping back. The city is closed at around 5pm and everyone is thrown out. On the trail you will spend the night in tents, but not in the city. There is a hotel at the entrance to the city, but it is outrageously expensive (around $500). I spent the night in Aquas Calientes (hotel reviews and more can be found in my Machu Picchu Travel Guide).

Having lived in Peru for 6 years, never gone to Machu Picchu... well, this picture sure helps me avoiding that Tourist infested place.

Many thanks for excellent photo work and for allowing others to see one of the wonders of Peru!

At times it was like a zoo up there. Before the arrival of the trains and after they left it became a little more quiet but overall I was a little bummed out by the amount of people. It was like disneyland with people crawling all over the place. Here are two pictures showing the hordes:
Crowds in Machu Picchu
Another Crowd

Felicitaciones, francamente fuera de serie la "fotito". Se pueden contar las hojas de los arboles. ¿Escondieron a los turistas o estaban de vacaciones? Dan ganas de volver una y otra vez.

Gracias Manuel,

actually the place was crawling with tourists just moments before I took the image (see links above your post). I simply waited for everyone to leave. The keepers were already blowing their whistles for a while trying to get everyone to leave when I took the photo.

Great photo, truly. Thank you for sharing!

However, you should really relax when people ask for a downloadable copy. Works made public on the net can typically be saved to your hard drive. This is not a violation of copyright laws any more than clipping a photo from a magazine and saving it is. As long as someone doesn't reproduce your image without your consent, no harm is being done. Besides, think of all the bandwidth you'd be saving!

What? I am saving bandwidth if someone leeches the complete image? Hm. No matter how much you zoom around you will never have seen all tiles. When you donwload you will. I am not quite sure how this qualifies as saving bandwidth. And yes, I should relax. However I have seen my images in commercial prints, on real estate websites and don't you know. Noone ever offered me a cut of their income. This image took a week of computer processing and working on it and I don't like to see it on some travel agency website making money with my work. I am not sure who just gives away a week of work? How about someone works a week for free on one of my projects? And no, things on the web are copyrighted too, although most people simply don't know that. How come the car mechanic charges me $100/hour and I am supposed to give a weeks work away for free (plus the material and cost to travel). The other day I asked Reuters for an Image on another website of mine. A small 400 pixel wide image. They wanted something like $60 for each of those tiny images. Why don't you head over to Reuters.com and beat on them for not giving away their stuff for free? Please don't take this personal. I know that 99.9% of the visitors are honest and if it were for you guys I'd be more than happy to make the image downloadable, but from past experience I know that it would be commercially exploited. Simply because I say its protected and because I have my images registered at the library of congress doesn't mean people care. Every day I can see attempted robot ripps and even hacking attempts. The internet is a bad neighborhood and you have to put a fence up somehow.

If you want to understand this issue you have to consider the intent Internet was conceived for and how this differ from the way it's now used.

I believe this *explains* (do not justifies!) why peoples are acting like they do.

The main point is how academic researchers publish or keep as secret as they can the results of their researches. If they don't publish them, they just say nothing about what they found. If they publish them, they just want the largest number of citations: citations are the money they use in their exchanges. No real money is (directly) involved in this process.

As in any other circumstance, some of them don't obey the rules and steal: as a rule, when this is discovered there is no lawsuit but the culprit is banished from the community.

The Internet was *designed* for a community but now...

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.
I have published some papers myself (I do have a day job). The difference is the relatively small audience. If your work is being ripped off it is very easy to track down the offender and discredit his/her work. Noone would steel it, since it gives you such a bad reputation and those that do are ousted anyways. But ideas are still stolen and currently I cannot publish much, because I am working for a company. If the ideas are stolen, my company doesn't make money, I loose the job, no more new ideas.
If everything I do becomes free, I have no basis to support continuing what I am doing. Time to fold and start working at a gas station.
I am sure that this will be the last Image of its size that I will "publish". It simply is not worth having to deal with these things.

Great work !
weldone

Andre,

I have attempted such shots in the past but found that it would take me about 15-20 minutes to shoot all of the shots in the row x column matrix. This time lag caused some problems with clouds moving and shadows slightly changing with time and showed up during stitching. How long do give yourself to shoot the full matrix and have you run into any issues with time lags?

Regards,

Jeff

Hello Jeff,

thanks for the feedback.
You have to plan your shot accordingly. As you can see, I have more clouds on the left, while the clouds on the right were captured by a single row. This means starting from the top right would be a good choice in this particular shot.
It also helps to have a fast camera. My Canon 20D is quite capable to shoot fast and with a fast Compact Flash the data is transfered to memory quickly.
Furthermore, if the clouds move only a little, the blending software will be able to correct the seams. Overall it didn't take me 20 minutes. I think it was done much more quickly. I always take more than one though, since I don't have a really good tripod and I have had some of those where just two pictures didn't overlap properly ruining the whole shot.

WOW. Best pictures I have ever seen. I have been to Knowth and Newgrange in Ireland, I was blown over. I now see, thanks to you, I have another destination point.
Thanks so much. Only wish you were sitting here telling me more detail of what I am looking at. (that would be A LOT of commentary...)
Thanks again for your work.
Very impressed.

Sou brasileira e apos ver sua fotos fiquei ainda mais impressionada com essa maravilha do mundo. Extraordinariamente linda e intrigante! Com certeza farei planos pra conhecer de perto essa cidade. Muito obrigada pelo prazer unico de ver fotos e ficar tao impressionada. Me fez viajar ate la. Parabens!
Elna Broni

Thanks for the lovely picture. I visited Machu Pichhu in 1974 (over 30 years ago!) Amazing how it has not changed a bit.

Gracias por fotografiar de esa manera a Machu Picchu, es realmente asombrosa... eso es sólo una pequeña muestra de lo que mi país puede ofrecer a todo el mundo. Qué esperan? vengan y visiten mi país, es precioso!!!

Thanks for to photograph Machu Picchu in that way, it's really amazing... this one it's just a little sample that my country can offer to the all world. What are you waiting for? come and visit my lovely country, is beautiful!!!

Yes, Peru is one of the most amazing countries in the world. There are many things too see and to be discovered. Check out the links underneath the picture for some more information.

necesito fotos de satelite de peru

I am in the twi-tri-light of my years on earth and I have always had a burning desire to experience Machu Picchu.

With the aid of your picture, somehow I know my dream will come true. I must visit there soon to see and feel and walk this ethereal spot in Peru.

Thank you (danke schon) for your generosity in sharing this picture.

I cannot understand all this fuss over whether one can download images. Most people could not download this size anyway. Does the photographer not get any enjoyment of visiting the places he goes to. If as he says he has a day job why spoil the enjoyment trying to get money out of his holiday. Come on, be reasonable and not so mardy. Whenever I take photos I would be pleased enought to know someone wants to download a photo I had taken. Shows I am doing something right. Am awaiting a change of heart on your part, so get on with it. A very good photo and a pleasure to view it but spoilt by the remarks you give about people trying to get your work for nothing. Come on man, you have a day job you say so you must be on holiday.

Don't get strung up about my comments.

Will not comment again because you have deleted my original comments.

I don't delete any comments. However I get some comments that are empty (maybe you made a mistake?).
EDIT: I just noticed this page has gotten over 50 comments so it made a new page (I switched to 70 comments per page, but eventually it will wrap around again).

Edward: I guess I overreacted. However if I make this downloadable I wouldn't be able to pay for the bandwidth (assuming 10% of the visitors to this page will download the image).
The image is now available for download as a high resolution wallpaper here.
So for those of you who were really interested in getting the image on your desktop, grab it for free.

this picture is gorgeous! i found it in an info link from google earth. it really helped clarify the satellite image and gives me a good idea of what it might be like to visit it myself. keep up the good work and thanks for making the wallpaper available!!

Absolutely amazing. Feel like I've been there already (going in March). Thank you for this magnificent opportunity. Even the stairs and small stones placed at the highest point are so clear. And thanks too for your commentary. Much appreciated.

Nice Man, just by zooming and looking at every place in the photo reminds me when I was there a while ago. Bytheway I am a Peruvian living in Canada. And I will be making a website about Machu Picchu in the next few weeks (hopefully I will get it done way before the New 7 Wonders of the World deadline, which is in July 7, 2007). I have a relative who will be going to Machu Picchu this April, and I'm giving him my camera to take lots of pictures for my website. Anyways, the reason I'm doing this website is because I love Machu Pichu, and since I am a Web Designer I'm using this website so I can put it in my portfolio. So Andre I wanted to ask you if I can put some of your pictures from your free gallery in my website until I get my pictures when my relative comes on May. I haven't started the website yet, but once I do it and I put it online I would let you know (If I get your permission of course). Because I don't like breaking any laws.

So let me know Andre if I can do this, and thank you for loving Machu Picchu from a Peruvian who loves it the same way.

Dude Awesome I found a little guy in the picture. Awesome this is an awesome picture

famous place of peru

I am so proud to be an Inca descendent that everytime I see pictures like this just gives me goosebumps! I've been in Cusco 6 times so far, last time I was there was january '07 and never get tired to come back again,I have been browsing your pictures and they are all stunning! Congratulations!

Wow - what an amazing picture, zooming in and seeing detail like brickwork is stunning!!

However I can't beleive that some people have had the cheek to comment that you should give this up as the full res image for free! Andre you didn't over re-act you are right there are loads of people out there making money and they're doing this on the side and even selling crap! You can, apparently buy someone's used underware on ebay!! Edward Pebble is an arse! and obviosly not one who truely appreciates this picture or you hard work in producing it, he was probably just trying to get it to make some money for himself.

I'm sure that those who truley appreciate your hard work would be happy to pay for the full image if they wanted it, in fact I personally think that you should offer it as a printout for those who truley appreciate your amazing photography. It would look great mounted on the wall in many a home. I reckon that you'd find most hotels, esp those in that area, would want it in their reception area (at say 6x4 foot) for people to gaze at.

Well done, keep it up and thanks for sharing as much as you do already, mucho kudos to you!!

I would love to buy this picture on canvas, but the largest size = 30x40 for 110$. My budget is 200$ I would love this picture in 40x50.

I have just uploaded the photo here. (I just realized it was missing from my Peru Photo Store). They now offer Canvas too.
My store is managed by Smugmug (that I have evaluated many times for quality and price by ordering a bunch of prints through them).
Your maximum budget does not cover my own cost for getting a Mounted Canvas through Smugmug (check their prices if you like). So unless you are willing to settle for a Rolled Canvas and I cut out all markup, its not going to happen.
Please contact me through the contact form on the site if you would like to discuss this further.
Andre

Hi, i am a surfer and student from Peru who likes travelling around the world. i visited cusco and it was unbelievable and I have no words for Machu piccu - met so many different people from different parts of the world, made friends, had adventures, etc. etc.

if u are interested con tact me
celias1@hotmail.com

machu picchu..es lo mejorque tiene sudamerica..y por que no el planeta?no por nada es una de los lugares candidatos a ser escogidos como una de las siete maravillas del mundo,los que la visitaron saben porque lo digo...asi que vengan a visitarlo, hermosos paisajes,historia, diversion y aventura... es una experiencia increible..
Don´t believe what wrote the last person before than me, he haven´t visited any place in lima, even cuzco.plop!

jaaja

Ysabel
yssa_11_11@hotmail.com

Not only a stunning view, but the quality of the photo at 222 megapixels is stunning. I feel like an eagle :)

WOW, that is beautiful. Simply Stunning.

i saw a person in the image :P its just unbeliefable.. so sharp

yeah yeah
typical noggie
youd swear he owned the feckin place

very impressive Andre. Sorry there's so many people wanting to STEAL your picture. some people's kids! I hope you're only selling real prints and aren't actually selling the full size digital or that's just asking for someone to rip it off!
I just have a few questions. Were you only using your 50mm lens for this like you described in your tutuorial? I'm guessing something longer. When you are taking the pictures do you ever overlap so there will be 3 pictures with the same stitch joint in it? i ask because I find when i take pictures too close together and try and join them in autopano it makes it rather soft when i combine them in auto pano. also I'm just kinda new to using autopano. do you usually just use the picture right out of the program (cropped, ofcourse) or do you mess with those adjustments that you can use in autopano?
finally, do you always force it in manual exposure or do you have success with joining files that are auto metere?. just because i would think sometimes the whole scene is too constrasy to keep all the detail in the dark sections but not blow it out in the lighter sections if you're using a constant exposure

keep up the good work!

Hello Peter,

I have answered your questions on my Highres Tutorial Page since I feel that this could benefit other people too, who might be looking there.

Thanks for your comment.

why do you have to react like that! all the above message are well intentioned and heck yes, it is his pic, his time and money invested.
A Peruvian

Que foto tan bonita, gracias por permitirnos apreciar este lugar tan maravilloso con esta excelente imagen de una de las Nuevas Maravillas del Mundo.

Thank You.

Awesome, Andre! Peru has been in my list of places to travel to for a long long time, and this photo and your others of Peru make me want to go all the more. I love the zoom, fine work on putting this together. I am also a photographer and ordinarily I don't go too ga-ga about another photographer's work, but your work is excellent and I have saved your website url so I can return to soak up the method to get this kind of photo - WOW - Don't know if I can shoot anything this awesome, but congratulations again. Incredible job, thank you SO MUCH for sharing!

All the best,
Cat = ^ . . ^ =

Thank you Thank you Thank you for providing this awesome photo! I am sending this link on to all my friends! This makes it like I am right there!!! I hope you can keep posting this for a while.

You must have snapped a shot every two steps you walked in this beautiful, mystical land. Thanks for sharing, and please share more.

Thanks everyone for the nice comments.
Kweenkong: Nope, I took it all from one point of view. Below the picture there is a link to the tutorial in case you want to try this out yourself.

Hey Andre, great work. Here's a fellow photographer who says kudos to keeping your labor protected. Great shot, G

Geez, I went looking for a decent picture of Machu Picchu, but nothing could top this! Beautiful work!

Nice image, but peanuts compared to this 1.5 GIGApixel image of the same subject :
http://www.docbert.org/MP/

"Nice image, but peanuts compared to this 1.5 GIGApixel"

Even I have a bigger image of Machu Picchu, but photographically this one was superior, so I chose this. The detail of the image you refer to is amazing, but quite frankly cutting of the mountain doesn't quite do it for me. Of course thats just my opion. For some its all about the size, but for me its also about image appearance and to convey a sense of the place.

My image doesn't have those many obvious stitching errors either (I really don't like to cut people in half):

Neither do I like to put togehter panoramas with focussing problems. This issue is elaborated in my stitching tutorial and has to do with the tremendous focal length required and the compression in depth of field:

In the rightmost image you see where he put together a somewhat sharp image (right) with a unsharp image (left).

I still believe that Scott did an outstanding job and I commend him on his good work.

Everyone subscribes to a different philosophy and while I prefer technically perfect stitches, you seem to prefer pixel races. I believe that someone can make good photographs with a 2 Megapixel camera and bad shapshots with a 16 Megapixel Monster. I sell most images at a much lower resolution (books, brochures, magazines) anyways. Instead of pixel counting I am now subscribing to a different philosophy myself (hence my recent purchase of the Canon S3 IS as a step down for special tasks). I know there is no convincing of megapixel (or in this case gigapixel) fetishists, but since lots of people read my blog who just start out, don't be deceived into thinking that you can only make good pictures with very high resolution cameras.

That being said, if you prefer size so much, I should probably upload a large San Francisco Mosaic (800 Megapixel without obvious stitching errors), but quite frankly these large images create a lot of headache (server resources).

My picture is already a couple of years old and I have no doubt in my mind that one day someone will stitch an image that exceeds the resolution of Scott's image. Thats the natural progression of things ;-)

Meanwhile I was wondering if you would like to share some of your own peanuts?

Hello

Very interesting information! Thanks!

G'night

Andre,
A brilliant photo. I am planning a trip up there in Aug 2008.

Regards

awsome so great

Hello Andre

amazing pictures!!! I've always been a fan of Peru since my childhood and been looking for pictures on the net latelty and yours are the best I found.

I'm planning a trip too in August 2008 to Peru. Any advices?

THanks for all the wonderful pictures ; from your web site i gather your enjoying the world ;great! ;I am turning 60 ; good to fair shape; i hope to vist next year in sept with a group of brits as my wife is one ; from all of us thanks for the all pic/ info ; keep shooting !!

I have just seen this incredible image in an advert in London after the movie, after going through your website I am certainly a big fan of yours, i'm an amateur fotographer n hope to learn a lot from you.

regards

Ali Humair

Hi,

I was trying to help my son find a free pictures of Peru to use for his 6th grade school report. The country he picked was Peru. Any free pictures?