'Palm Sunday' at the Marketplace

This is the Main Market of a village in Southern Poland, called Lipnica Murowana. (I took the subject of the present theme pretty straightforward :-)

The fantastic folkish celebration in this village takes place every Palm Sunday (this year, March 20th). Every year the picturesque highland village stages a vibrant competition contest "O Lipnicka Palme" (the palm of Lipnica) to build the biggest festive palm, and the whole market place erupts in a blast of color and song. As you can imagine, palm trees themselves were not so common in medieval Poland, but not letting that get in the way, the Poles created their own unique version of the palm, a colorful creation that was woven from dried flowers and straw. Over the years the Polish Easter Palm has evolved into one of the most distinctive features of the country's Holy Week festivities. In every town throughout Poland you'll find these palms, but in Lipnica Murowana, palms are stretching as far up to the heavens as possible (up to 30 meters, see the red arrows). Although the palm has been an inseparable part of Easter processions since time immemorial, Lipnica's unique competition was first staged in 1958. It's been a much-loved fixture in the region's calendar ever since.

Find more about that here and at www.lipnica-murowana.prv.pl

Europe / Poland

Lat: 49° 51' 32.54" N
Long: 20° 31' 38.82" E

Elevation: 269 m

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: Unknown / Undeclared.

The panorama was taken with Belarussian Peleng MC f 3.5/8 mm lens (set at f 11, ~ 8 m) on Canon EOS D-Rebel, (set at 1/200s, ISO 100). I took several pictures, because people were in constant motion, but the panorama was stitched with 5 pictures using Professor’s Helmut Dersch Panorama Tools (well, the PTGui graphical interface). The circular HOV of this lens on EOS D-Rebel is 165.8^o. Autopano and Enblend were of a great help.