360 Degree PANORAMA: Alona Beach, Panglao Island Bohol

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Long before it became a famous tourist destination in the Philippines, the pristine island beach had been a site of a location shooting of one of FPJ’s (Fernando Poe Jr) films a couple of decades ago. The film, the locals recounted, was starred by no less than the ‘King of Philippine Movies’ himself with his favorite leading lady, the actress Alona Alegre. Later, the beach was named after the actress.

Alona Beach is a short stretch (about one and a half kilometers long) of white sand on Panglao Island, Bohol in the Philippines - a paradise. I was there for the first time last Holy Week, from April 21 to 23, 2011.

When a friend planned and arranged a trip to the place and invited me to join, I took the once in a lifetime occasion as an opportunity to escape from work -- to relax and unwind. So after more than a month of virtually non-stop working beating deadlines, I finally got a chance to escape from a very stressful work of ‘crunching numbers’. Working as a structural designer, I really crunch numbers -- dealing with mathematics on a daily basis -- on breakfast, lunch, and supper. Now, it’s a chance for me to finally put my canon DSLR camera I bought less than a year ago into work. All that I’ve wanted to do is to create a 360-degree viewer-interactive panoramic view of the beach.

I enjoyed my stay at the beach, taking pictures of beautiful scenes in the surroundings. Mostly, my attention was focused on finding nice subjects for a photography lesson (I really want to learn photography) until I found something strange in the place; yes, really strange. Together with three other people, I saw a giant centipede about 2 feet in length. This unusual sighting took place in a place at the southern end of the beach. There is a small store in the area where we stood by for an hour, savoring hot noodle soup. The time was almost 6 in the evening. We had an interesting conversation with the store owner when suddenly, coming from the grassy side of the store, a black and long fast-moving creature moved towards our location. Thinking it was a snake, everybody panicked and struggled to find a safe place to avoid the moving creature. We can only guess, by its sudden appearance, that the creature might be in an attack mode. Once it was exposed to a much-illuminated portion of the ground as it moved toward us, we were sure what it was. We have a clear image of how it looked like; it has several feet. After a sort of short 'deliberation', we unanimously identified the creature as a giant centipede.

A similar version of a GIANT centipede I found in Alona Beach in Panglao Island

The next thing I knew was that I grabbed my camera for a shot. Unfortunately, my reflex was so slow: the centipede was nowhere to be found when I finally had my camera ready. It has already made its way towards a nearby pile of stones and wood. Had I made a successful shot, that could have been a shot of a lifetime? Imagine capturing a giant centipede on camera? Never did I find such a creature in books and in scientific television programs such as in National Geographic Channel. In a check with the internet, however, I found out that such a giant really exists. If that is the case, then I could be the one to first discover its existence in Alona Beach. There may be a lot of these giants hidden somewhere in the place underneath, undisturbed by humans. That should remain undisturbed, anyway.

Shortly before leaving the beautiful Alona Beach after a three-day stay, I was able to take a series of pictures with a vantage point in front of the 'Sierra Madre Resort Hotel'. I set up my tripod at this vantage point and took pictures in a clockwise direction. The results, below, are good but with a little problem: the camera was not properly aligned with the horizontal plane -- resulting in a sloping horizon. Bloggers who want to show pictures as viewer-interactive in their blogs may follow what I did with the pictures below:

Image Sequence# 01	Image Sequence# 02	Image Sequence# 03

Image Sequence# 04	Image Sequence# 05	Image Sequence# 06

Image Sequence# 07	Image Sequence# 08	Image Sequence# 09

Image Sequence# 10	Image Sequence# 11	Image Sequence# 12

Stitching the series of 12 images arranged in the sequence above using the application 'ADG Panorama Tools' by Albatross Design Group, I finally created a simple yet astonishing Panoramic View of the Alona Beach Resort as viewed from my vantage point. The resulting panoramic image, however, has some noticeable image irregularities.

Irregularities that you may find in the resulting panoramic image include the following:

• The horizon appears to curve up and down as you pick and drag to navigate the 360-degree view of the panoramic image. This is the result when the camera mounted on a tripod is not properly aligned with the horizontal plane. ‘Image Sequence# 01’ to ‘Image Sequence# 04’ show sloping horizon gradually decreasing until it becomes totally horizontal in ‘Image Sequence# 05’.


• There is also a ghostly image of a woman that appears on the left side of the coconut tree. This is a problem when shooting moving subjects. The woman that appears at the right side of ‘Image Sequence# 06’ no longer exists at the left side of ‘Image Sequence# 07’ on the same location of each scene. When the program tries to stitch the two images, it has a hard time resolving pixels at the calculated stitch line.

A Panoramic View at ALONA BEACH, Panglao Island Bohol, Philippines

Pick and Drag to navigate through the Panorama

Note:

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