Monthly Archives: February 2014

Monterey Bay Aquarium

wpid8817-C59F4976.jpgMy nephew was interested in a visit to the aquarium at Monterey while they were staying so he and I decided to head down there for a day.  I last went over ten years ago so did not remember a great deal about it.  I also didn’t know whether a lot had changed in that time anyway so not remembering was not a major problem!

wpid8797-C59F4791.jpgFirst things first.  This place is great.  We spent plenty of time there and could probably have spent more but we were thinking about some food before heading home.  The collection is very interesting and really nicely laid out.  Not only does it cover the wildlife of the Monterey Bay well, it also has some very nice terraces outside so you can go and see some of the real thing while you are there.

wpid8789-C59F4702.jpgThere are two huge tanks cover deep water and the kelp beds of the bay.  These can be viewed from upper and lower levels and there is so much going on, it is easy to just stand and stare for long periods of time.

wpid8811-C59F4911.jpgThere is a great jellyfish exhibit.  Nancy and I saw a similar exhibit at the Shedd Aquarium a while back as I reported here but this is a permanent feature and it is well worth a visit.  There are other attractions that get a lot of visitors including the octopus exhibit.  While we were there, this fella was very active.  He (or she, I can’t tell which) would retreat into a dark corner for a while and then suddenly make a trip across the tank covering the glass with tentacles as he went.  This was amazing to watch.  Why he did it so often I don’t know.  Maybe they do something to prod him into action every once in a while.  (It was also quite fun to hear people berating those people using flash on their cameras which seemed to be happening every couple of minutes.  Signs are hard to read I guess.)

wpid8787-C59F4687.jpgWe spent some time outside watching the wildlife.  We had brought binoculars but there were some healthy telescopes available to use to.  Sam quickly spotted the spray from a grey whale out in the bay and there were plenty of sea lions and sea otters to see although usually a bit far out.  The bird life was teeming closer in.

I will be back before too long.  I suspect any other visitors will want to check it out too but I can handle repeat visits I think.

Fort Point

wpid8626-C59F4428.jpgA great place in San Francisco to take people but one that seemingly is ignored by many tourists is Fort Point.  Located at the mouth of Golden Gate, it is a fort designed to protect the bay entrance.  Now it is right underneath one end of the Golden Gate Bridge so it provides a very different vantage point for bridge viewing.

wpid8638-C59F4531.jpgI forget how interesting a place it can be.  We took our visitors there so that they could get the unusual view of the bridge but we ended up spending a lot more time there since the place is very interesting in itself.  Why do I not remember that?

wpid8628-C59F4438.jpgThe fort structure is very cool and it has a number of exhibits including old cannons, rooms configured as they were when it was in use and displays on the building of the bridge above it.  The upper levels provide a great view of the entrance to the bay as well as the bridge and he bay itself.  Being so close to the bridge gives you a chance to play with some angles that provide a more distorted view of things which can be quite fun.

wpid8634-C59F4500-Edit.jpgAlso, you are under some of the ironwork which has great colors and textures.  A little HDR can help here to cover the well shaded structures as well as the views beyond that are in full light.  Whether you want to see the context or go a little abstract, you can find something to play with.  Meanwhile, some panorama options are there to be played with given the shape of the fort and the bridge beyond.

Changing My Approach to Panoramas

Ever since Adobe got their act together with the Photomerge function in Photoshop, it has been my default for creating panoramas.  Previous versions were a little unreliable but they cracked it a few versions back and I have not changed my approach since.  However, a recent bit of YouTube exploring has changed that again.  Russell Brown had a series of videos on making panoramas from aerial shots and, while I was watching them because they were aerials, the stuff he came up with on stitching panos was actually more useful to me.

Instead of using Photomerge, he uses the same functionality of Photoshop but in individual steps.  The technique involves opening all of the shots as layers in a single file (something you can do straight from Lightroom which maintains the re-import linkage that I like about Photomerge).  Then you select all layers and use Edit>Auto Align Layers.  This gives you the same options as Photomerge.  Apparently, according to Russell, if you have a series of shots where you have rotated position but are looking horizontally, Spherical works best.  If you are looking up or down, use Circular.

The result can be quite distorted if you use Circular but it will all get better soon.  If you aren’t happy, you can undo the step which is a lot easier than starting from scratch which is what you would have to do in Photomerge.  Once the alignment is done, Edit>Auto Blend Layers while take care of the rest of the stitching and blend everything together nicely.  It defaults to a Panorama blending option.

With the blend done, flatten the layers and open Filters>Adaptive Wide Angle.  This will default to a panorama setting and, if you have the distorted output from the Circular settings, now you will suddenly see everything come back to what it should be.  You can tweak this filter to get verticals and horizontals aligned as you wish and then you end up with a good pano output.  Some cropping and filling of blank areas with Content-Aware fill and the job is done.  I shall be taking this approach for all my panos from now on.  If you don’t use this approach already, you might want to give it a try.

Also, you can go to the original source on this and check out Russell’s videos on YouTube.

Muir Woods

wpid8615-C59F4580-Edit.jpgHaving visitors is always a good excuse to go to places that you haven’ been to for a while.  Muir Woods National Monument was one such destination.  If only we had known just how many other people had the same idea, we might have aimed to get there a lot earlier in the day.  As it was, we got there a bit alter in the afternoon.  A short while later and it might have been a lot easier to park.  Of course, late in the day in winter means fading light and being in a heavily wooded area means even less light!

wpid8621-C59F4617.jpgMuir Woods is a great place to wander.  Having a lot of other visitors means it is a little less tranquil.  My previous visits have obviously been off peak and usually involved colder and damper weather.  This time it was dry and warm(ish).  The trees are majestic and often interestingly shaped.  However, being so close to such large trees as coastal redwoods does make it hard to get the images that you have in your mind.

wpid8611-C59F4570.jpgThe light is tricky and the angles wide.  Some playing with HDR and panoramas certainly helped out.  Sometimes it was just fun to look straight up.  The shapes there are exactly as you imagine them.  The dynamic range is so large that even HDR doesn’t always cover it (at least the way I was bracketing the shots) but it still worked out okay.