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Panorama Borealis is an exhibit of photographic prints by G. Donald Bain displayed in the Palmela Municipal Library Gallery, Palmela, Portugal. It opened June 3, 2011, as part of Palmela 2011 - the International Panoramic Photography Festival and will be available through August 2011. This exhibition of 80 prints documents Don's seven-week trip through Canada to the Arctic Ocean in August and September 2010.

Don made this 14,000 kilometer trip alone, mostly camping in his van, and created 550 VR panoramas. In the course of this epic journey Don drove the entire thousand-mile Alaska Highway, traced the route of the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush from Skagway on the coast of Alaska to Dawson City on the Yukon River, and followed the Alaskan Pipeline from the oilfields on the Arctic coast to the tanker terminal on Prince William Sound. He experienced starry nights, fall colors, glaciers, mines, lots of frontier history, and abundant wildlife.


On June 3, when the exhibit opened, Don gave an illustrated lecture in the Palmela Library Auditorium, and told the story of his long and often exciting trip. He described how he waded across a pond and stood on a beaver dam to capture fall colors in the Chugach Mountains, how he drove the Dalton Highway to Deadhorse 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and how, on his last day in Alaska, he came face to face with a huge grizzly bear – and got a picture. The lecture and opening of the exhibit was attended by the Mayor of Palmela, seen here with Don and the life-size grizzly bear.

The exhibit is arranged in chronological order — it tells the story of the trip. Each photograph is numbered, clockwise around the room, with captions in both English and Portuguese. The prints vary in size from small images for continuity, to gigapixel prints 3 meters wide. More than half the photos are derived from 360° panoramas. These were taken with the intention that they be viewed interactively on a computer screen, and only later reprojected and cropped into a form that could be displayed on a gallery wall. But each caption contains a QR-code (like a square barcode) that can be read by a cameraphone or iPad2, resulting in an interactive version. To experience the exhibit on-line click any link in the Table of Contents below, then proceed from page to page by clicking Next. Each page contains a small version of the print, and the same title and caption used in the exhibit, plus links to the interactive version and relevant locations on the website Don Bain's Virtual Guidebooks.

Table of Contents North From the Border Across British Columbia Mount Shuksan Cottonwood House Barkerville Historic Town Kinuseo Falls The Alaska Highway in British Columbia and the Yukon Albino Moose Storm Approaching Over Muncho Lake The Alaska Highway Liard Hot Springs The 1898 Klondike Gold Rush "Stampede" Route Ophelia Johnson at the Red Onion Carcross Depot Floatplanes at Whitehorse Don Meets a Giant Beaver World's Largest Weathervane Five Finger Rapids Dawson City on the Klondike River Leaning Buildings on Melting Permafrost Gold Dredge Number 4 Inside the Giant Dredge Ferry Across the Yukon River Back Into Alaska Beautiful Downtown Chicken The Garden at Rika's Roadhouse The First People in the Americas The Dalton Highway to the Oilfields on the Arctic Coast The Dalton Highway Elevated Section of the Alaska Pipeline Don at the Arctic Circle Camp at the Arctic Circle Gravel Bar on the Koyukuk River Tundra on Finger Mountain Grayling Lake Dalton Highway Truck Traffic Arctic Tundra Deadhorse and Back to Fairbanks Latitude 70° North Wading in the Arctic Ocean Artistic Treatment of Grayling Lake Birch Grove Fall Colors Traffic on the Elliott Highway Rescued by Ron's Towing The Northernmost Denny's Valdez and Prince William Sound Fishing Boats at Valdez Site of Old Valdez Floating Ice at the Columbia Glacier Floating Ice Blue Iceberg Forested Islet Berry Picking Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park Standing on a Beaver Dam Chitina River Morning Mist McCarthy Kennecott and Mount Blackburn Kennecott Copper Mill Main Street of Kennecott Kennecott Mill "Brewery" The Last Camper in McCarthy Long Lake Reflection Copper River and the Wrangell Mountains Mount Sanford from the North Alaska Highway Across the Yukon and the Cassiar Highway in British Columbia Kluane Range Autumn Glory Willow Flats Reflection in Pickhandle Lake Pickhandle Lake Beautiful Boya Lake Good Hope Lake Eddontenajon Lake Hyder, the Salmon Glacier, and a Grizzly Bear US-Canada Border at Hyder The Salmon Glacier Salmon Glacier Viewpoint The Salmon Glacier Grizzly Bear — Life Size Grizzly Bear Looking at Me Grizzly Bear and Salmon Glacier It Could Have Happened Like This! Homewards along the Skeena River and Inside Passage Yellowhead Highway and Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Historic Totem Poles Totem Pole Clan Icon Net Loft The North Pacific Cannery Boat Bluff Lighthouse The Inside Passage