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February 4, 2007
Queen Mary Arrives in San Francisco
We had everything worked out. We'd start with margaritas and a spicy bloody Mary at Sam's in Tiburon. After brunch, we'd drive to the Golden Gate Bridge and park at the north end to avoid the huge crowds coming to the magnificent ship pass under one of the world's most beautiful structures.
On the way, a terrific idea came to me. I decided I'd position myself on the Golden Gate Bridge directly above the path of the huge ship, with my camera's intervalometer set to take a shot every 10 seconds. Then I'd hang the camera off the side of the bridge and shoot straight down. Here's the good part - I planned to stitch the resulting images together to create a perfect panorama of the Queen Mary II from directly above. Wow! Would that be cool or what? Of course, my plan was too good to be true.
First of all, once on the bridge, a rumor circulated that the bridge would be closed directly above the ship. (This was evidently true.) Second, my monopod did not extend far enough to get a clear shot straight down. Finally, my calculations never considered the huge shadow cast by the bridge. So - we moved on to Plan B. We hiked the full length of the bridge and tried to find a spot on the west side of the bridge, where I though the light would be best. We hiked along the coast, but eventually realized that we would not get the view I imagined until we were near Baker Beach. Since this was just too far away, we settled on the location Kelly had suggested from the beginning - the south side of the bridge above Fort Point. I'm pretty sure this was one of the best spots because some dude with an 8x10 view camera was set up in prime territory directly below and in front of us - territory off-limits to normal people with smaller cameras. I'd assume the guy was an employee of the cruise line or something. Too bad it was a 4 mile round trip to this spot. Oh well, I guess it was worth it because the weather and the view were splendid. And the ship? Well, it was really, really huge.
Anyway, the Queen Mary II - on a fully-booked 80 day around-the-world tour will be in the bay area for 24 hours, where it's well-heeled passengers are expected to spend 1.2 million bucks shopping. I don't suppose many of them will make it to Oakland.
Posted by thedude at February 4, 2007 9:10 PM
