Alcatraz
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Today's morning sessions on making panoramas from kites, in caves, or on long poles covered a lot of material beyond my area of experience, and I enjoyed finding out how they make some of those amazing compositions. I even ended up with a complimentary CD-ROM virtual tour of the off-limits cave system featured on Planet Earth. I look forward to exploring it on a big screen at home. Its producer is here, won one of the contest categories, and may be hiring as he shoots more and more national parks and creates CD-ROMs of them to sell in tourist shops. He trained rangers to make the panoramas in this case because he himself isn't a caver and wasn't allowed and wouldn't want to go down there himself.
In the afternoon most everyone chose an excursion, either an on-foot guided tour of San Francisco, a visit to Alcatraz, or a visit to the Golden Gate Bridge. I chose "The Rock" because the World Wide Panorama theme this time is "Community" and I didn't want to simply shoot the community of panographers here, as many other people are doing. I figured I'd work Alcatrez in somehow, and the National Park Service allows tripods there, so it seemed the best option.
Apparently the lore of the place draws huge numbers of people, but I just don't share the fascination with the place. Big old prison. Bad people stayed here for a time. It's all broke-down and rusting, crumbling away. So what? Okay to visit I guess, but I wouldn't want to go back, nor particularly recommend the place. I'm glad I went, because I did get some panos to fit the theme well (they're stitching now) and fog covered the GG Bridge the whole day. While there we did get some special treatment: one of the volunteers let some of us into normally off-limits areas, so we got to see and photograph some areas that most people don't see.
Nine of us had a nice sit-down dinner near the piers and rode the subway back under the bay to campus. There's a gentle fog covering the university so I had to stop and shoot the lighted camponile (bell tower) with the moody lighting before returning to prepare my Tuesday morning panel presentation.
The Rock
Seagull!
In the afternoon most everyone chose an excursion, either an on-foot guided tour of San Francisco, a visit to Alcatraz, or a visit to the Golden Gate Bridge. I chose "The Rock" because the World Wide Panorama theme this time is "Community" and I didn't want to simply shoot the community of panographers here, as many other people are doing. I figured I'd work Alcatrez in somehow, and the National Park Service allows tripods there, so it seemed the best option.
Apparently the lore of the place draws huge numbers of people, but I just don't share the fascination with the place. Big old prison. Bad people stayed here for a time. It's all broke-down and rusting, crumbling away. So what? Okay to visit I guess, but I wouldn't want to go back, nor particularly recommend the place. I'm glad I went, because I did get some panos to fit the theme well (they're stitching now) and fog covered the GG Bridge the whole day. While there we did get some special treatment: one of the volunteers let some of us into normally off-limits areas, so we got to see and photograph some areas that most people don't see.
Nine of us had a nice sit-down dinner near the piers and rode the subway back under the bay to campus. There's a gentle fog covering the university so I had to stop and shoot the lighted camponile (bell tower) with the moody lighting before returning to prepare my Tuesday morning panel presentation.
The Rock
Seagull!
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