The Giant's Organ Pipes

This panorama, from the Giant's Causeway on the County Antrim coast, opens in front of a formation of columns of basalt rock set into the cliff face. It is known as "The Giant's Organ Pipes". I chose it for this event because of its huge scale.

These columns are about 15m tall. To get a sense of the scale of these giant pipes follow up the stepped path to the right of the pipes until you see a human figure in a bright orange jacket.

The Giant's Causeway consists of about 40,000 of these interlocking basalt columns, the result of a volcanic eruption about 60m years ago. Most of the columns are hexagonal. The main causeway is the promontory that you can see a few hundred metres away to the right of the scene that opens here.

The Giant's Causeway is located about 5 km East of the town of Bushmills and about 25Km West of Ballycastle. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986 - the first in Ireland.

The Giant's Causeway, is the most popular tourist attraction in Northern Ireland. The site is owned and managed by the National Trust and includes an interpretive centre.

There are beaches, cliffs and harbours on the coast around the Causeway that are also interesting to visit . There are wonderful cliff top walking routes in both directions from the causeway taking the visitor who is prepared to make a day of it to these other attractions.

There is much myth and legend associated with the causeway. The main legend suggest that the Causeway was created as part of a feud between two giants Fionn mac Cumhail (Finn McCool) of Ireland and Benandonner of Scotland.

The giants are credited with having built the causeway in order to cross the sea and challenge each other. Various structures around the site are named for their role in this myth. The structure in this panorama is compared to the pipes of a huge organ.

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Europe / UK-Northern Ireland

Lat: 55° 14' 29.5" N
Long: 7° 31' 14.16" W

Elevation: 30m

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Equipment: The source images were taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mk II, Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens.

The camera was mounted on a Kaiden Kiwi panorama adapter on a Manfrotto 190XDB tripod.

Horizontal photographs were taken at 60° angles and also two ground shots and a sky shot. Each "shot" consisted of three bracketed exposures from +2 to -2 stops.

A total of 27 separate images were combined using Hugin in order to achieve this High Dynamic Range type result.

This is my first contribution to WWP using this Canon Lens. One of my reasons for switching to this lens is that the images could be processed using the Canon software: Digital Photo Professional to correct for Chromatic Aberration.

Then they were combined using Hugin/Nona/Enfuse/Enblend in order to achieve this High Dynamic Range type result.