Auckland, New Zealand
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| After
crossing the
International
Date Line and adjusting our watches for a "lost" day, we landed in
Auckland in
the early morning of Tuesday, March 1, 2005.
Auckland is
the largest city in
New Zealand with a
population of roughly half of the country's 4 million people. |
Above is a panoramic view of the city from the crest of
Mt. Eden,
one of
Auckland's
extinct volcanoes. Three high-resolution photographs were taken, each one
overlapping the image of the next one to it by just a little. Later, in my
home studio, I "stitched" the three images together using special software
designed for that purpose. The result is a 5497x1533 pixel image of the
city. The image above has been reduced in size a great deal to fit your
computer screen.
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The tower in the center of the panorama is the popular
Sky
Tower landmark at the entrance of the
Sky City Hotel.
The is the hotel in which we stayed on our first night in
New Zealand. A
closer look at the tower's location is at left.
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On the prior day, we enjoyed a visit to the observation level of
that tower. I took the photo at right where
Mt. Eden can be seen rising above the city in the background.
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A cropped and enlarged view of
Mt. Eden is at left.
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I enlarged the image
of
Mt. Eden and found that one coach is parked at
the top in seemingly the exact spot where ours was parked when we visited the
volcano. It is almost as if I managed to take a photograph of myself
looking back.
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| Above is a closer
shot of the peak of
Mt. Eden while we were there. In this image, that really
is our coach parked at the top. At right is
Auckland in
the background from the far rim of the volcano. |
Predictably, the
Sky
Tower provided beautiful views in all directions. We enjoyed a clear
day. In the lower right corner of the image at right you can
see the reflection of the windows of the tower.
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| The
observation deck of the
Sky
Tower is well designed to allow views not only straight out |
over the city, but also virtually straight down.
I found that the tinting of the glass on the observation deck of the
Sky
Tower caused my photographs from there to be too murky. By adding red
back into the image in my studio, they began to look more natural
again.
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The harbor invited a lot of sightseer's attention. Large
barges contrasted with cruise ships. In the photo above, a
pair of speed boats leave their trail in the water while in the
foreground, cargo ships are loaded and unloaded.
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At right, a barge and a land crane work together to do work afloat.
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At right is the
Auckland Harbour Bridge. It was opened on May 30, 1959 and
has a span of 1,021 meters (3,350 feet).
Click
for an interesting image of it's construction.
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A pair of buildings I found difficult to identify stand much higher
than any others around them along a portion of Auckland Harbour.
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| At right
is a compelling view of an expressway winding its way into downtown. |
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