3 Giraffes Posing as Themselves

While visiting San Diego Wild Animal Park we managed to be there at the same time as the first serious pouring rain in Southern California. To our delight our booked ride on the "photo Safari" suddenly became rather empty and we had the truck to ourselves along with a fantastic guide.

When we passed the giraffes I had to break out the camera and get a panorama. Strangely the Giraffes had no idea of basic posing. As a result I pretty much just kept shooting frames trying to get the full body of the giraffe and also clean frames for a full sphere.

By the way. giraffes are VERY curious as long as you don't scare them, and they quickly stopped my shoot by tasting the lens... Don't ask HOW I know, but giraffe "yuk" is really sticky on a lens.

Once home I rendered everything in PT-gui and then started applying layer masks in Photoshop to pull out what worked. This panorama is a composite of 14 frames. All in all, this was the most fun panorama of the year, and for a wet day with pouring rain I would say it came out, and will always be a great memory.

While not the most technically challenging panorama of 2005, this was by far the best fun I have had photographing a VR panorama in 2005.

San Diego Wild Animal Park is HIGHLY recomended if you are in Southern California.

USA-Canada / USA-California

Lat: 33° 5' 49" N
Long: 117° 60' 45" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: Unknown / Undeclared.

I try to keep it light. Photographed with Canon Pro1 with FC-E9 fisheye lens, mounted with my spherical travle bracket to a gitzo G1027 tripod. Stitched in PT-gui and composited in Photoshop. For the Pro1 panorama solution see my website