p&o
Days 4-6: At sea, and arriving at Southampton
LAND! Dear, sweet, sturdy land! I love you very much. Today was the last day of the photo shoot, and overall everything went to plan. I am now knackered, so I’ll sign off & update this more in the morning.
0Day 3: Gibraltar
Ahh Gibraltar – famed for its monkeys (Barbary Macaques apparently) and … other things. This is where we are today!
We’ve been trying to get shots of the pools and bars today, but the weather’s been against us – its been grey and uninviting – and until 5 minutes ago we had another cruise liner moored next to us, right in front of the Rock of Gibraltar.
The company actually doing the panoramic image virtual tours is the aptly-named Panoramic Imaging, owned & run by David Woodward. These VTs are pretty awesome, and definitely add real value to any site that sells products or locations.
Update: check out our Panoramic Tour! Click & drag in the viewer to move the viewing angle…
1Day 2: Casablanca
Today’s port is Casablanca. Sorry for updating this blog entry late, but data costs here are ridiculous.
Having never been here before, I’m embarrassed to say I’d no idea which country it was in: for those who don’t know, it is in Morocco. We were rather hoping for a ‘pretty’ port…but this is what we got:
This scuppered our plans to shoot the bars & pools on-deck, as the view is a bit…industrial. Still, though, another early start to shoot a couple of interior bars that opened early specially for us to ensure quietness. After that we shot the photo and art galleries respectively.
A rather cool feature of these virtual tours is the ability to embed video into them – so if there’s a plasma screen on the wall in the ship (as there is in the photo gallery), it can have a video of our choice embedding into it when viewed on the web.
0Day 1: Cadiz
Today we’re in Cadiz, Spain.
We’ve been liaising with the ship staff so they know what we’re doing and how it all works. Amongst other things, Virtual Tour shoots are not the same as a typical point & shoot camera: it sees everything in 360 degrees – so there’s no hiding behind the camera or moving stuff out the way easily. There must be no movement during any of the shots either, or the layering of under & over-exposed slots won’t work. Clearly a challenge on a working cruise liner! Picking your moment is vital.
The afternoon shoot schedule is pretty full: restaurants and bars mostly. They all need to be made up ready for customers – but without the customers – so it needs timing, organisation and lots of smiling waiters 15 minutes before opening time.
The P&O crew are exceptionally polite, friendly and helpful. They also have an astonishingly good memory for names (and recalling what you ordered last night, for example): its embarrassing when they know who you are, yet I’ve no idea what their name is! Must make more of an effort…
Anyway, here’s a shot of the harbour at Cadiz. You can see one of lifeboats in the corner on an emergency drill exercise.
Day 0: Lisbon
After an early start, flew to Lisbon to join the ship. Nothing to report yet, other than the views from the bow. More to come tomorrow, when we arrive at Cadiz!
