Breathtaking photo project offers lifelike views of NYC

Breathtaking photo project offers lifelike views of NYC

Airpano.com

Sergey Semenov's AirPano project offers unbelievable birds-eye views of New York City.

An eye-popping panoramic photo project capturing New York City and all its apparent and hidden beauty is making waves on the Internet.

With mesmerizing detail and astonishing sharpness, the gorgeous collection of photos, which are part of the AirPano franchise of panoramic galleries, captures a bird’s-eye view of New York in high-definition clarity.

Russian photographer Sergey Semenov created the project by assembling thousands of high-resolution 3D aerial panoramas taken of the city during helicopter tours in 2011.

His team then digitally “flattens” the images and stitches them together to create the galleries.

Viewers can see gorgeous scenes of the Empire State Building at sunset, images of the Statue of Liberty bathed in an array of beautiful colors at dusk, and sprawling views of Central Park.

"The sense of the project itself is to show the people the most beautiful places of our planet in the manner that nobody has ever seen them before: from the bird’s-eye view with unlimited freedom of vision and movement," Semenov wrote on his website.

“The desire to share my impressions with those who can’t travel due to different circumstances led me to the project,” Semenov added. 

The AirPano galleries allow users to experience the photos as if they were actually there. 

With a series of buttons that allow the user the manipulate the direction of the photo and zoom in or out, the project makes it so “anyone can turn (their) head and look (at) any side: up, down, to the left, to the right, ahead, back and (at) different sides,” Semenov wrote.

AirPano galleries currently include over 70 locations throughout the world, and more than 20 are expected to be added in 2013.

Check out the panorama below: