Posts Tagged ‘aerial images’

Gray Malin’s Book Signing at Google’s Pop-Up in NYC

Wednesday, November 1st, 2017

I happened to attend Gray Malin‘s book signing at Google’s Pop-Up store in New York City’s Flatiron district last week. He is a rising fine art photographer who is particularly known for pristine, bright aerial photos, and he was promoting his new book, Escape. Having this art event hosted at Google’s little shop might have seemed apropos, since many assume that his photos must have been made with the help of drones, or that they are digitally manipulated to the stunning brightness they display. But, this isn’t the case.

ESCAPE - book by Gray Malin

ESCAPE – book by Gray Malin

I was visiting Manhattan while attending the annual SMX East conference where I spoke on leveraging social media for the benefit for search engine rankings, and I also took the opportunity to check out Google’s trendy little popup store. As I describe in my article about the store, Google seems to be seeking to entertain visitors and to enchant them with their displays and demos at the location. For instance, one wall had a number of reproductions of famous pieces of art hung on it, and signs invited one to use the latest Pixel phone to identify them via invoking Google Assistant.

Malin Gray book signing, Google Popup Store, Flatiron District, New York

Malin Gray book signing, Google Popup Store, Flatiron District, New York

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The Escher Effect Invades Bing Maps

Sunday, July 11th, 2010
I noticed that the beta version of Bing Maps, which adds cool functionality to their mapping interface, has a fair degree of the “Escher Effect” now appearing in the Bird’s Eye view (aerial photos):
Escher Effect at the Williams Tower, Houston Tx (formerly known as Transco Tower)

Escher Effect at the Williams Tower, Houston Tx (formerly known as Transco Tower)

 

As you may know, the “Escher Effect” is caused by the digital stitching-together of quantities of aerial photos, some of which are taking at different times, and from different angles from one another. (more…)

Earth Art Collection From Google Maps

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Pongsocket has some fantastic satellite maps picked out as “Earth Art” from Google. Ex:

View Larger Map

Each of the aerial/satellite pictures highlights some extraordinary terrain or landscape coloration and patterns. The pictures have a wonderfully expressionistic feel to them and are well worth browsing.

However, these selections are not truly “Earth Art”, which is a name that refers to manmade constructions which fit into the natural environment in some way, rather like the works of Christo and Robert Smithson.

I’ve collected quite a bit of Earth Art examples for articles about Google Maps for a while now. Here’s Smithson’s famous “Spiral Jetty”:

Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson

Pongsocket’s examples are some really good samples of beautiful satellite or aerial photography. But, for it to be “art”, it requires human intervention of some sort – some level of intention.