by Jim Bellomo | Dec 19, 2022 | Photography
I love shooting panoramic (pano) photos. Not the kind you do with your iPhone. The ones I take are usually composed of a series of photos I have taken from the same place, with my feet firmly planted on the ground. I swivel my upper body and shoot anywhere from six to 15 photos. Before I start shooting them, I take a photo of my left foot. Then when I finish, I take a photo of my right foot. When I am doing my photo triage, later on, I know where the pano starts and ends.
Then I process those photos in Camera RAW and stitch them together in Photoshop. From that, I have gotten some pretty good panoramic photos. But I will let you decide. I decided to put together this post because I have so many panoramic photos, but I can’t post them on Facebook or Instagram because they crop them severely. When I do, you can only see the very center section. So here are a few of my own with a caption that tells you where I took them. As you will see, I take them both indoors and out, of scenery and people as well. Anytime I have a subject that won’t fit into one frame. My shortest (the indoor one in Naples) is only three photos stitched together. My longest (not sure which one) might have as many as 20.
Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. To really see these, you have to see them BIG!
My best pano…Puerto Vallarta sunrise
My most recent pano…The Boeing Museum of Flight
Victoria, British Columbia
Venice, Italy
Cinqe Terre, Italy
Split, Croatia-1
The first Olympic stadium, Athens, Greece
Taromina, Italy
Bonaire
Split, Croatia-2
Taromina, Italy
New Orleans, Louisiana
Toronto Aquarium
Athens, Greece
Niagara Falls, New York
Monte Carlo, Monaco
Mariner Spring Training Game, Peoria, AZ
View from the Acroplis, Athens, Greece
Athens harbor, Athens, Greece
Sedona, Arizona
The Parthenon, Athens Greece
Kotor, Montenegro
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Naples, Italy
Taromina, Italy
Monte Carlo, Monaco
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Akaroa, New Zealand
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Dunedin, New Zealand
Interior of the dining room on Holland America’s Nieuw Statendam
The beach at Seaside, Oregon
The Biosphere outside Tucson, Arizona
Bonaire
Bonaire
Avalon Harbor, Catalina Island
Celebrity Century
Downtown Curacao
Dawes Glacier, Alaska
Allure of the Seas
Inside a mall in Naples, Italy
In the beginning, the cubists broke up form without even knowing they were doing it. Probably the compulsion to show multiple sides of an object forced us to break the object up – or, even better, to project a panorama that unfolded different facets of the same object.
—Marchel Duchamp
by Jim Bellomo | Jul 3, 2021 | Uncategorized
If this post comes off as a little loopy it's because we had to leave Mike and Cathy's house this morning at 2:15 am to get to the airport for our flight to Quito. So please forgive any omissions or mistakes. Plus I am writing it in our Quito hotel room where the altitude is 9,000 plus feet.
I finished the last post before we left for dinner and a concert on Thursday so I wanted to drop a little bit in here to finish up our visit with Mike and Cathy. On Thursday night we went to a free community concert that Mike and Cathy go to all the time. And then on Friday we did a super relaxing "yacht tour" of the intercostal waterway from Delray Beach south for a few miles. Saw lots of cool boats and houses and drawbridges. Then it was back to Cathy's house for an awesome pot roast farewell dinner. The next morning Mike actually got up at 1:45 to take us to the airport. That's a true friend. And you would think it could be sad to take our leave of these friends but we aren't that distraught as we are staying another night with them on our way home.
Make new friends and keep the old; Those are silver, these are gold.
Joseph Perry
by Jim Bellomo | Jun 25, 2019 | Uncategorized
This is it. The last post of our more than three week 2019 trip to Europe. Yesterday I told you about our short and sweet visit to Cork and Cobh and the next morning found us sitting at the dock in Dublin. But unlike previous cruises, we did not have to get off the ship. Celebrity, in their great wisdom, had decided us to give us an overnight stay in Dublin before we had to disembark. So we arrived on Thursday the 13th at 7:00 am and didn’t have to leave the ship until 9:00 am on Friday the 14th.
This left us with an entire day to do something else in Dublin. This might have been really important to us if we had not just spent three full days in Dublin before the cruise but that all worked out since we were going to the Guinness Storehouse to celebrate Bob and Holly’s anniversary by taking part in the Guinness Connoisseur Tasting Experience.
If we hadn’t already known quite a lot about beer, this would have been a super learning activity but we had pretty much been schooled in beer by Kathleen’s daughter Michelle and her husband Brian who are level one cicerones (the beer equivalent of a sommelier). Since we pretty much had the beer facts down pat, it was a very fun way to spend two hours with friends and family and drink a sample of every beer that Guinness makes (six to be exact) plus learn to draw the perfect pint of Guinness (as we had learned about Beamish the day before in Cork). By the way, one thing we learned was that the Guinness Storehouse has been named one of the top tourist destinations in Europe. It’s a really slick presentation and very well done. If you are in Dublin, it’s worth the time and cost.
Once you have looked at the pics below, our trip is done. We have been home for more than a week now and if you missed the story of our flights coming home, you can read about that by clicking here. We hope you have enjoyed traveling with us and I plan on returning to posting about travel in general for the rest of June and most of July…right up until we cruise again, to Alaska on July 26th on Royal Caribbean’s Ovation of the Seas with our kids and grandkids. Can’t wait.
In the meantime, since it’s summer, we are doing ship visitations and those deserve some posts as well. Last Thursday we went to Vancouver to tour Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth, so you can watch for that one coming soon. This Saturday we are touring Norwegian Cruise Line’s Joy and I will get some info and photos from that one. Later in the month we will be on our old friend Solstice as well as Ovation. Watch for these.
We get the welcoming talk at the Guinness Storehouse
The famous lease that lasts for 9,000 years at 45 GBPs signed in 1759
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
The story of beer
It’s the water
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Kathleen in the advertising section of Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Kathleen in the ad section of Inside the Guinness Storehouse
In the marketing section of Inside the Guinness Storehouse
Inside the Guinness Storehouse
The Guinness harp in its many incarnations
Waiting for the Connoisseur Experience
Our instructor for the Connoisseur Experience
Getting ready for beer tasting
Lots of beer tasting
Bob pulling is pint
Kathleen pulling her pint
On the top floor of the Storehouse is the Gravity Bar. It is a 360 degree view of Dublin but it was a really flat day, thus not a lot of pics.
My favorite food from my homeland is Guinness. My second choice in Guinness. My third choice – would have to be Guinness. —Peter O’Toole
by Jim Bellomo | Jun 23, 2019 | Uncategorized
When I was about five I had a great grandmother that we just called Grandma Kinney. She was my maternal grandmother’s mom and her claim to fame was being born in County Cork, Ireland. Three summers ago we visited Cork and did the usual stuff you do when you hit the port of Cobh. That would be going to Blarney Castle, the Blarney Woolen Mill, the epicurean village of Kinsale and a few minutes in downtown Cork. So this time we didn’t need to do that so we (us and our good friends Bob and Holly) wanted to head into Cork to the English Market. It’s a typical old-style English market and bills itself as the oldest English Market in the world—and it’s not even in England.
We got off the ship, got Steve, Jamie and family off on a tour van to Blarney and grabbed a cab (took a little while) and headed into Cork. Our cab driver dropped us off at the back door to the market, just down an alleyway to the market, past a really cool mural dedicated to everyone in the world…except George Bush (really—see the photos).
We wandered through the market (which was very nice and really cool) but much smaller than we expected. So when we were done we had only been in Cork for about 45 minutes (which was kind of ridiculous for a 25 euro cab ride) so we thought we should find something else to see. On the way in from Cobh (where the ship docked), our cab driver had recommended that we see Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral, the biggest church in Cork. It was pretty impressive (see the photos).
After we had seen the church, we all needed to use a rest room and Kathleen mentioned that in the last block she had seen Fordes pub and thought we could kill two birds with one stone, use their restroom and get a pint. It turned out to be a GREAT idea. Not only did they have really clean restrooms, they also had a super barman who told us the history of the bar (been in the same family for generations) and offered to teach us how to pull the perfect pint of Beamish. For the uninitiated, in the north of the republic of Ireland, Guinness is king but in Southern Ireland, Beamish is king. So now Bob and I both have certificates that we are certified to pull the perfect pint of Beamish (did you know that a Beamish must sit for a 117.5 seconds after the first pull to let the nitrogen bubbles settle?. Well I do.)
After a nice break and a pint, we took a taxi back to the ship and took a break while the others toured all over southern Ireland. The whole journey comes to an end in Dublin which I will show you a little more of tomorrow.
And monkfish
Just another pilot boat
They got olives
The cathedral of Saint Fin Barre
Quite the façade
Holly, Kathleen and Bob check ou the mural
Fordes Pub. We will come back to this later.
Along the River Lee
The sign on the back entrance
The mural on the alley entrance to the British Market in Cork
And figurines on the front of the pulpit
230 years. Can you believe it has been here for 230 years
Ad lots of other fish
Sailing into Cork, I saw another example of alternative energy in Ireland
Angel on the front…
Along with some saints.
On a fountain.
Heron alert.
The cathedral in Cobh
And an excellent altar
A magnificent ceiling
Mosaics in front of the altar
More great stained glass
Another outside shot
More doors
And more great stained glass
Along the River Lee
With a gargoyle or two
These guys were NOT amused
Then let it sit like this for 117.5 seconds
Then fill it all the way up.
The inside was beautiful and very well preserved.
WIth beautiful stained glass
The graveyard behind the church
Two fun people in front of the cathedral
Looking forward inside
Bob pours his Beamish
Here, in Cork district, you have in combination all the dangers which war can inflict. ——Eamon de Valera
by Jim Bellomo | Jun 22, 2019 | Uncategorized
I was glad we had come back a little early from our first day tour so I could be up at what would be dawn at home (5:30 am) to see old town Akureyri and I got lucky and had a great walk. I didn’t get rained on but the by the time I got back it had really started coming down. I will leave it at that and you can see what I saw in my photos. Later on, some of the group went into town but Kathleen was wiped out so we stayed on board and the whole gang was back for a late lunch at The Porch (a Reflection alternative seafood restaurant) and it was wonderful. A great lunch. Some super fresh seafood and some of the best sangria I have ever had. Drank way too much of it. We sailed out late in the day and it was a beautiful sail out up the fjord. This was followed by two sea days before we would dock in Cobh, Ireland. More about that coming on Sunday.
But it has cool doors
Reflection in Akureyri
Straight on at Reflection
A very cool sculpture that would have looked better in sunshine
Found this great statue in old town Akureyri
The harbor in Akureyri
Another boat on the shore in old town Akureyri
Old town Akureyri at 5:30 am
This is the oldest house in Akureyri. It dates to the late 1700s
We couldn’t believe these people were going whale watching like this. It was freezing!
Akureyri has a big church as well but not as big as Reykjavik
And this one
And a red and white boat
Here’s the 10:45 from Reykjavik
Our crazy gang having lunch at The Porch
And this family of swans
I got off the ship to mail some postcards and found these trolls
This ship is a Ponant Cruise ship. They are a French cruise line that sails small (100-200 people) cruise ships.
The Akureyri Airport was right off our verandah
When I prepare, I am not messing around. I find the right places, the right people, and the right environment. Iceland is one of those places. —Conor McGregor
