Waikiki from Eaton Square by Hawaii Pacific News

GigapanMagazine.org  vol 2 issue 3

Waikiki one block from the beach, on the roof of Eaton Square. Jeremy, Romina, Lucija, Britta, Simon and Pete met on the roof top of Eaton Square, 36 stories up. Jasmine stopped by too for a barbecue with some friends. She had shot up at Tantalus with Galina and Pete earlier in the day. Romina is from Germany, Lucija from Slovenia, Britta from Atlanta, Jeremy from Southern California, Jasmine from Canada, Simon from Kauai, Galina from the Dominican Republic and Pete from Oahu.

There is a heavy, plastic, tinted glass barrier that's over 6 feet high and surrounding the pool, barbecue grills and lounge area. We had no ladder and the tripod didn't extend above the barrier.

So we stacked two round plastic-topped tables on top of each other and hoped for stability. The four metallic legs of the one table fit into the aluminum rim of the other. We had no ladder and stacked chairs was too dangerous and scary to climb on top of at the corner of the building. We decided to set up on the ground and hoped the trigger mechanism wouldn't slide off in the middle of the shoot.

Thankfully it wasn't windy. So the team calibrated and tried to account for the angle six feet up that we would be placing the camera, and the y-axis we would be lifting the camera up to. The table looked pretty level, though there was a subtle and inevitable warp in the circular plastic top. We calibrated horizontally and vertically, but we could have set a more extreme down angle, that was one of the features about being up there, the canyons below; and we didn't foresee the camera angle drifting below the horizon after the 180 degree mark.

We ordered pizza and watched the sun set. You can see over the Alawai to people playing in the park on the mauka side to Magic Island on the makai side (proposed "Barack Obama Park" by Mayor Mufi Hannemann--yikes on that idea!).

Unfortunately our makeshift jib had an unstable foundation, and even the Kolor stitcher could not equalize the per-picture calibration. The collapse of images from the corner turn of the building to sundown to the west, is like a dreamy slide into deep sleep. Interesting how Western reading (left to right) is replicated here in the language of nature.

HPN Crew: Romina Adler, Lucija Ramovs, Brittany Shields, Jeremy Lee, Simon Sakai, Pete Britos