I feel that inverse. We moved from Western Washington/Central Oregon to Texas. I’m still trying to figure out where the hell the mountains are so I can tell north and south. 🙃
Armchair geologist here! Here's the thing. You said the Pamir mountains are not a plateau. Are they both geography? Yes. No one's arguing that. As someone who climbs and hikes on mountains, I am telling you, specifically, I am gonna solve this whole argument for both of you:
Here's the thing. You said a "hill is a mountain."
Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that.
As someone who is a scientist who studies mountains, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls hills mountains. If you want to be "specific" like you said, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing.
If you're saying "mountain family" you're referring to the taxonomic grouping of Landforms, which includes things from buttes to crags to plateaus.
So your reasoning for calling a hill a mountain is because random people "call the tall ones mountains?" Let's get bluffs and mesas in there, then, too.
A hill is a hill and a member of the landform family. But that's not what you said. You said a hill is a mountain, which is not true unless you're okay with calling all members of the landform family mountains, which means you'd call bluffs crags, mesas, and other elevated landmasses, too. Which you said you don't.
The point is to look at literally any of the results when you Google the plateau which was specifically chosen as the Google term because it's in the name of this post.
The point is to show you that if you just googled the place in the title of this thread, you would have easily found out that it was mountains.
What are they doing with the camera here? Is it just zoomed in and we aren't used to seeing moving videos with extended zoom like this? I've seen other videos like this before that are disorienting in the same way,
It's just a really long telephoto lens. Lenses like that will compress the image to make things look taller and more dramatic.
It's the same effect (but the opposite) going on in videos like this. The stairs are pretty steep still, but instead of looking almost vertical they look more like this from the side
The technical name for the effect is called "Lens Compression", and here is a good short or a good article with some more details of you want.
The effect is hard to see in those examples. It's surprisingly hard to find good examples that show the difference between wide angle lens and telephoto lenses. This youtube short kind of shows the difference in what you would normally see to what it looks like through a telephoto lens. The mountain looks much more intimidating, towering over the person with the dog because it makes the mountain look much closer to the subject than it actually is.
Same thing with the mountain behind La Paz with wide angle: Here
I'm so confused - is the video or photo meant to look worse?!? The stairs in the video look completely safe and normal to me, while the stairs in the photo look dangerous. But the way you phrased your comment implies the opposite
You see a lot of lens compression in aviation photography, where people see pictures like this and talk about it going "straight up," when in reality is was more like 30°
I don’t think that’s telephoto… maybe a bit of digital zoom. Looks like a phone recording. If it was telephoto, you wouldn’t be able to see the asphalt ~10 feet in front of the car. There’s no way this was shot on a 200mm lens. I think the mountains are actually just huge.
I don’t think there’s a ton of camera trickery going on. It looks like it was recorded on a phone. If it was telephoto like some people are saying, it would be way more compressed. The road wouldn’t have any depth to it.
The mountains in this region are just very steep. I’ve seen videos from go-pros in Afghanistan that have mountains like this.
I was gonna say. I live in Salt Lake city... there's areas around here that feel like mountains are literally a straight wall dominating your entire field of view, moreso than this video
I went hiking there on a weekday. Place was eerily empty. I left early thinking “if something happened it feels like it would be weeks before someone cam across my body.”
Same. That honestly made my brain hurt trying to picture exactly what I was looking at. (Try not to read the title). It actually messed with my eyes like an illusion.
When I picture the way to hell I am going to picture this place from now on, hah.
You know how dogs do that head tilting thing when they’re confused and can’t really tell what they’re looking at or listening to? That was literally me for the first 5 seconds of the video
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u/locapeepers Feb 11 '25
That was disorienting until I could see the sky in the frame. What a cool spot!