I originally wrote this post to go up at the end of December, and had it all ready to go, then forgot to actually post it. Then January flew by in a whirl with my family around, and I've finally got enough time to see about properly posting it.
In the previous post in this series,
2015 was a pretty slow year for me regarding panoramas, having only made a total of six and concentrating them into two months of the year. 2016 was a more varied year, where I still only made seven panoramas but spread them out more evenly to about one a month.
February
 |
| Mauna Kea summit, from the entrance of the JCMT. |
February's panorama is a common theme, the summit of Mauna Kea. This is taken from just outside the entrance of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, looking from north to east. You can see all the telescopes on the mountain at the time except for the Submillimetre Array (off to the left), the JCMT (behind me), and the Very Long Baseline Array radio dish further down the mountain.
March
 |
| West end of Puʻu Huluhulu. |
I'm
pretty sure this is a panorama, based on the file size and perspective effects. (It's definitely not one I assembled out of multiple photos, so I'm thinking it's from my phone camera.) I posted almost this exact picture, except cropped, in
a post from 2016. This is the west end of Puʻu Huluhulu, a small eruptive cinder cone near the start of the Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa access roads. I took this picture because I was interested in seeing how the overlying volcanic “crust” had been thrust up by the explosion that created the puʻu, which I talk about more in the linked post.
May
I never uploaded this panorama before because it didn't turn out all that great—the Sun's flaring on the left and it's pretty dark in places otherwise. It's from a park pretty close to my house in Hilo, where what I think is a little offshoot of the Wailuku river flows serenely by. Some of the foliage, especially in the center foreground, is captured pretty nicely at least, even if the overall contrast range didn't work out too well.
June
Experimenting with getting a good contrast range was the theme for June, as I took three panoramas with my phone camera, all from atop Puʻu Kalepeamoa looking up towards Mauna Kea at sunset:
The first one came out way too dark, as the camera focused on exposing the white clouds and blue sky.
The second one came out better. The clouds are blown out now, but you can still see a bit of blue in the sky while simultaneously being able to make out details in the shadowed areas.
The third one swung a bit too far into overblown territory, though at least the detail in the shadowed areas can be seen quite clearly now!
While writing this post I had an idea to see if I could somehow merge the three together to get an image with high dynamic range, but unfortunately the perspective shifts enough between them that it's impossible to get them to line up correctly.
July
In July I took a trip to a night market down in Puna the name of which I've unfortunately forgotten (“Uncle Roberts,” maybe?). It was located down by the beach, which allowed to get this…very strange looking panorama at sunset. No, that's not some distant tsunami causing the water on the horizon to bulge up like that, it's just what my phone camera made of it. Wish I'd been able to get a better panorama, as it was a nice rocky beach and a beautiful time of day, with the water all foamy on the strand.
September
In September I took
another trip to Volcanoes National Park and hiked the Kīlauea Iki trail for the third time. As per tradition, I took a few panoramas while I was there:
The first is from my phone camera, and illustrates a problem I've often had trying to get pictures within the Kīlauea Iki crater. Namely, the lava rock is so dark black that it's really difficult to expose both it and the sky at once. I'm sure it's possible, but my phone camera wasn't able to pull it off. I never posted this panorama as I wasn't happy about it for that reason, but looking at it now I find I rather like it. Sure the sky's blown out, but the rest of it's actually a pretty good representation of Kīlauea Iki from the eastern end.
The other panorama is one of the more rare vertical ones, and this one is hand-created from a few photos I took with my DSLR. (I've found Hugin doesn't necessarily handle these vertical ones that well.) This area is at the foot of the mountain of cinder and rock on the south-western edge of the crater, where the lava erupted from. I'm not sure why it's so much greener than the rest of the crater floor; perhaps water channels or pools here better? Or since it's more cinder and less unbroken rock, it's easier for plants to get a roothold? Whatever the reason, it's a little oasis of green in the black rocky desert.
And that's it for 2016 panoramas! In 2017 I get my second job working at over a mile high, so there will be some really nice panoramas, though it'll still be about the same number overall. A hui hou!
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