Posts Tagged ‘aerial photos’

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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Church Launches World’s Largest Chalk Painting ‘Skyvertisement’

Saturday, April 19th, 2014

I’ve mentioned before how my church, Fellowship Church, has leveraged their position directly in the landing path zone near DFW Airport to promote themselves through the use of a huge logo painted directly on their roof — a form of ‘Roofvertising‘, as it were. They’ve now done yet another type of “Skyvertising” by painting a huge chalk portrait of Jesus on the church parking lot:

Fellowship Church's Chalk Portrait of Jesus

Fellowship’s Chalk portrait of Jesus. The chalk portrait coincides with the week leading up to Easter holiday weekend, and the chalk painting is a form of skyvertising. Aerial Photo Credit: WFAA

While this is clearly more of a novelty and a PR ploy to remind people that this is Easter weekend (many people only attend church twice per year — Easter Weekend and Christmas services), roofvertising and skyvertising are actually serious forms of marketing that can often reach a great many people who are exposed to the promotions when they fly over them or see them when browsing through satellite imagery and aerial photos in Google Maps, Bing Maps, Mapquest, and other mapping applications. KFC’s “Space Ad” — an image of their iconic “Colonel” mascot/logo built at large scale out in the desert of Nevada — was probably the most famous example of this type of marketing.

Fellowship’s chalk portrait of Jesus certainly allowed them to abruptly stand out from the crowd of other churches all vying for attendees this weekend. Many churches do little more to promote themselves at Easter than to hang a large banner outside. (more…)

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…)

Google Maps Has Fixed The “Escher Effect”

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

A recent quick review shows that Google Maps has cleaned up the “Escher Effect” seen in Satellite view. The Escher Effect is caused when two separate aerial or satellite pics are taken of different sections/plots of a city, and then stitched together to form a continuous composite picture. Each pic is taken from a different angle, so the taller building pictures are taken from different perspectives, causing them to appear to lean toward or away from each other.

Escher Effect of the Empire State Building, New York, NY

Escher Effect of the Empire State Building

The “Escher Effect” is named after the famous Dutch artist, M. C. Escher, who was particularly known for illustrations using optical illusions that often involved perspective and side effects from how perspective is perceived.

When Google Maps introduced satellite and aerial photos, there was a lot of the Escher Effect going on. (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.