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Planning and Panning

by Mike McNamee

Mike McNamee discusses the ins and outs of planning with colleague Paul McMullin for the slightly unpredictable visit of some rather large boats!

The arrival of Queens Mary, Elizabeth and Victoria to the Port of Liverpool for Cunard's 150th year celebrations has been a long time in the planning. With as many as 1 million people predicted to descend on the city, McNamee and McMullin have been planning for months. The key objective is a new cover image for our 3rd edition of Liverpool the Great City. Publishers, Halsgrove, were persuaded to delay publication and so there is one, all-or-nothing chance to get the shot . And not at an ideal time of the day! The money-shot is probably going to be from an aircraft. A second objective is a large-scale panorama of the scene potentially for use as wall paper, there will after all be a surfeit of straight shots from the thousands of photographers - Cunard themselves will be posting press resolution images on their website as the scene unfolds.

Our mood has been up and down. Information has been sparse and often contradictory, as late as May 19 the Wirral council website simply said that the road closures were in the final stages of planning and organising! Other information suggested that the main road running parallel to the river would be closed for all of the day and beyond. We have also heard that push bikes will be banned from the promenade and so getting about is going to be trying!

An aircraft has been booked for months but there were rumours of a 'no-fly' zone. At the time of writing there were no Notams (Notice to Airmen) in place for the airspace over the river and so the flight looks as if it will be on after all. An additional hazard might be drones, the fact that it is illegal might not stop some of them being launched! Weather permitting, though, the aerial shot looks the most likely to succeed. Right at the last minute the pilot alerted us to a NOTAM for the take-off airport (Blackpool); a no-fly had been implemented to allow the Red Arrows to take off right on the time window we had chosen, McMullin will thus have to scramble earlier than planned!

Certain things we have been able to predict. The tide will be low during the procession of the ships up the river. All three are scheduled to meet at the mouth of the river and then process, line astern into the basin to perform manoeuvres in front of the Cunard building, depending upon the tidal flow and the wind (predicted at 14mph as we write). We can at least predict the state of the tide with some precision. Low tide is 11:35am, just about the time that QM2 meets up with the other two at the Brazil buoy which is about 200 yards off the corner of the peninsula. One the tugboat captains we have spoken to is sceptical that they can hold the three liners in position in any kind of tidal flow; the talk of a 'River Dance' is probably therefore a bit far-fetched. Even so the ships will have to do a turn somewhere, they can't back out of the river! Either way the departure of QM2 is scheduled between 2pm and 2:15pm so any river dancing will have to be quick and on time!

Back on land the issue is going to be the crowds especially if we attempt the planned multi-image stitch. The Gigapan requires a large tripod, a stable platform and no dogs, kids or adults bumping into it - this might be a tough ask! McNamee was despatched on his push bike a week ahead, to pedal the length of the Wirral seafront from the mouth of the river to the spot opposite where the liners will turn. At each location a shot of the road name and the view of the river was made. Normally we know within about 10 yards, where the location for a panorama should be but in this instance we have no clear idea of where the tidal conditions will push the liners and how they will line up. We also have only a vague idea of how tall they will be standing in relation to each other and the waterfront buildings (they can tower over them). Our long experience in the area teaches us that a few yards either way changes which buildings of the waterfront are visible and which are not but in this case moving might be impossible.

Stitching the Pan
The one thing that we do not have to plan any contingency for is the processing and stitching of any panoramas we manage to get. We have a background in this technology extending back to Fuji 6 x17cm film camera days, then moving right forward to creating panoramas at wall paper size. If the Gigapan has been used then it is best to employ the bespoke Gigapan software to perform the stitch. Depending upon the power of the computer used this can take quite some time, it all depends upon the number of images chosen. For simpler tasks we tend to use Photoshop although we most often break the process down into a sequence:

1. In Bridge select the pan images and Tools>Photoshop>Load files into Photoshop layers.
2. Select all the layers in the Photoshop Layers Palette then click Edit>Auto-Align Layers.
3. The click Edit>Auto-Blend Layers.
4. Finally repair any parts of the sea and sky needed with Content Aware Fill, crop, sharpen and we are good to go!
Using Photomerge is more successful if it works, but doing so depends upon your computer (laptops often crash), the version of Photoshop (they have got better at it) and finally the number of images that you need to stitch.

So that is where things stood as we went to press we will hopefully be able to show off some images in the next issue - there is just the small matter of planning 111 portions of food for the various relatives who are due to come and join us, it's going to be quite a party!



Updated 27/04/2026 16:44:22 Last Modified: Monday, 27 April 2026