A couple of weeks ago, there was an especially high tide in Galway. Coupled with a larger than normal outflow from the Corrib [due to all the rain that fell during the summer] and a strong onshore wind, there was some potential for flooding in the city. Happily, it seems that there was no damage done, though the waters did slop over the river bank at the Spanish Arch. Picture above is a panorama of 4 or 5 pictures joined together with Photoshop (that’s my shadow in the left hand corner) – the picture was taken on one of those rare occasions in August when one could actually see some blue in the sky.
Very original and interesting shot. I’ve always found it difficult to take a decent photo of the arch and it never occured to me to try a stitched panorama, nicely done.
Hi John,
I don’t want to admit it, but I found your site through a Galway search on Flickr… yes, because of Mr. Earle. I got suckered in.
Great pictures! I’ve been enjoying the frequent updates and backlogs for the last few weeks.
I have two questions about this photograph… What’s the approximate angle of the 4 or 5 exposures combined? It’s fairly hard to tell, even in the bigger version if it even makes it to 180 degrees.
And the second being – not that it’s important, but since you were already in photoshop, why didn’t you clone yourself out of the photo? At first glance I thought, “oh, cool, he left that in,” but then after looking at the picture some more it just became distracting. There’s that little something in the bottom of my left eye
Again, beautiful. Excellent capture of what I can only imagine is a great place to be.
Hi Alb – agreed – a single frame doesn’t really capture the Spanish Arch and the Claddagh. I’v been experimenting with panoramas of this area for the last few months,
Hi Jason,
thnaks for the kind words. I was tempted to remove my shadow at first but this picture is really about the people in it [and how they reacted to what is a rare flood event] as much as about the Arch and the water. The guy on the bollard stood there for ages, just gazing out at the waters. And there was a non-stop procession of tourists over where the girls are, looking at the water slopping over the pier. And since there was also me, clicking away and equally facinated by the very high tide and the people looking at it, I decided to leave myself in.[good luck with giving up the ciggies, too]
I agree. I probably would have left it also for the same reason, but I thought I’d ask what your reasons were.
And what about the angle of the combined shots? Without knowing the area or anything about it it would seem only about 100 degrees of view, but it could be completely deceiving.
And thanks
It’s a disgusting habit I’ve had for a quarter of a century that needs to go.
Not strictly your scene John, but here’s a movie from then.. except it was raining for this.. http://www.vimeo.com/6235665
Hi Jason,
I’d say the angle of view is probably around 100 or 120 degrees. I shot with a 17-40mm zoom [on a full frame camera] so each of the images was very wideangle. The distance between the guy in the foreground and the girls behind is only a few metres but the distance looks much more.
I find that shooting with wideangle causes some distortion issues when stitiching together a panorama, so I usually go for a central crop of the finished pano.
Sean – love the footage. I’ve been using my G9 to shoot some video but I often forget to use it (years of shooting stills only). However, Deirdre has just got a 5D Mark II and I managed to borrow it occasionally. It feels much more natural to shoot a bit of video here and there, even while shooting stills. I’ve accumulated a bit of footage over the last few weeks while I was on holidays so I plan to load them up over the next while.