I’ve been enjoying taking panorama pictures on my iPhone lately, but they’ve all been horizontally panoramic Last Saturday in Union Square, a girl I know showed me how to take panoramic pictures on an iPhone vertical as well as horizontal. Duh, me, for not knowing! They have a tendency to distort sometimes, as horizontal panoramic photos can do, but moving objects aren’t usually a problem, unless it would be birds. (Thumbnail images)
The Union Square Christmas tree during the 1990s: (Ray Morse / Emperornortontrust.org)
A cable car on California Street chugs past Grant Avenue heading up Nob Hill: (San Francisco Public Library Archives)
An old postcard of the Tribune Building in Oakland: (bookmarksnc.org)
Broadway at 12th Street in Oakland, from an old postcard: I worked in that building on the right for years when it was a Bank of America. No, it wasn’t a crooked bank. The tower had been added to the building long before I got there.
Whoa, I just barely got the Shell Oil Building on Bush Street in on that picture! I think my iPhone pulled a muscle stretching for that one. (ebay.com)
Wow, cool, the Star of Bethlehem visits San Francisco! Or maybe that was the moon. Actually, this was at the Fairmont Hotel Rooftop Garden last Saturday evening; a peaceful oasis away from the holiday crowd. My panoramic picture was a lot wider, but I cut it up so it would fit better with this image from the National Catholic Reporter that I found later.
And I can’t leave the Ferry Building out. It’s great to see the landmark building again after being covered up for months and months for its building-botox procedure. (vintagecityprints.com
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 
The unusually shapely Shell Oil Building looks like it got a bit too much botox. The Tribune Building is one that I remember after the Loma Prieta Earthquake. The awnings were shredded by bits of broken glass or perhaps other debris that fell from above.