On My Way to 'The Rock'

My wife and I were lucky enough to be able to start off summer in Cool San Francisco where the high temperatures were around 70 degrees instead of Memphis where the highs were in the mid 90's. We wanted to go to Alcatraz on the morning of the 19th, but it was already sold out until the afternoon of the 20th; so if you plan on going, probably a good idea to get tickets ahead of time online. Alcatraz is now part of the National Park Service. This pano was taken on the way over to Alcatraz on the 3:45pm tour. It is a short ride over to Alcatraz where you can then spend as much time as you like so long as you make the last boat back.

The Water here in San Francisco Bay plays a number of roles. Of course for transportation of goods as a port city; and also for tourism, as our boat is used for. Although I don't know if commercial fishing takes place inside the bay, I know the harbor seals that hang out there go fishing. And for Alcatraz the water used to be a moat that isolated the prisoners from civilization. That same isolation on Alcatraz now makes it a great nesting ground for coastal birds.

In this pano San Francisco is behind the boat and Alcatraz is in front of us; the small island closest to us. Way off on the distance on the port side (left of boat) is the Golden Gate bridge; and on the starboard side is the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge; where the large cargo ship is heading. As for the guy in the black shirt staring at the camera, no it is not a self portrait; I don't know who that is. I was not looking through the camera as I shot this so did not pay attention to the people in the scene. If you click on Alcatraz Island on the scene above it will open a new window of a pano taken from on Alcatraz near the lighthouse.

If you want to learn more about Alcatraz goto the National Park Service Website

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USA-Canada / USA-California

Lat: 37° 49' 4" N
Long: 123° 26' 4" W

Elevation: 15 feet

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: Unknown / Undeclared.

Eight Shots Taken hand held with Canon 20d and 10-20EFS lens EXIF data: 10mm, 1/250sec, F9 Stitched with Realviz Stitcher and adjustments made in PSCS2

This was a hastily shot pano that I was not sure would come out well. I often shoot handheld shots but this one was taken at a location where I could not look through the camera or maintain my own position as I rotate the camera. I used a rust spot on the boat as a reference point. Boats present a few problems. One is that you really have two different horizons. The camera relative to the boat, and the camera relative to the world beyond the boat. What would be ideal is to take all of the shots with the boat at the same point in its rock, ideally when it is level. That is easier said than done. Even if you do this if the boat is moving forward then the scene is altered like with fast moving clouds. The extent of this depends on speed of the boat and proximity to objects outside the boat. Bright light is also good since you are moving and want to maintain a fast shutter speed to minimize motion blur.

Well I tried an experiment with the stitching of this pano and it seemed to work very well. I basically first did a version of the pano where I optimized the stitch locations for the boat. I then made a copy of that file and changed the optimization of the stitch for the distant horizon. I kept the horizon-free picture of the back of the boat as common reference location for each. I then loaded them both into Photoshop and blended them together. More than half of the scene has nothing from the boat crossing above the distant horizon. This let the water serve as the perfect camouflage to hide my the blending of the two panos. The result is what looks like a relatively ghost free pano.