David Howell Travel Photography and Map Blog

Artistic data. An oxymoron?

Do you have to be a mathematician or a statistician to think that data can have artistic value? Or a geographer?

What artistic expression is possible if you blend a beautiful aerial photograph with elevation data? Is it art or is it cartography? When does cartography become art?

Today some of the nicest and smartest people on the planet are gathered in Rome for the 4th Global Workshop on Digital Soil Mapping.

I was able to attend the first three global workshops and I wish I could be in Rome today. I miss my friends and the challenging and stimulating discussions.

What the heck is digital soil mapping, you say?

Are you in any of the Google Street View images which can be viewed by anyone with a computer and an Internet connection?

Have you ever seen one of those funny cars/vans driving by with the contraption on top? You might be in one of the photos.

We noticed one driving down the street when we were sitting in a café in Paris near Luxembourg Garden. We weren’t out in the terrace section so I am sure we do not appear in the images….

Beautiful information!

OK maybe I enjoy maps more than most, but there is something very compelling about aerial photographs.

In this case the aerial photograph is not only beautiful, but it is also scale accurate and terrain corrected. That means that the distortions that occur in all aerial photographs have been taken out by computer corrections…This aerial photograph is of the vicinity near Trinidad, California, USA. This area on the northern coast of California is covered with beautiful redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests. The beaches are dramatic, scenic, and usually empty….