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Tuesday, March 1, 2005
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 Tuesday, March 1, 2005
started 3/1/2005; 1:48:07 PM - last post 3/2/2005; 10:32:48 PM
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Doc Searls - Tuesday, March 1, 2005 
3/1/2005; 5:48:07 PM (reads: 5406, responses: 7)
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Path test 
| | Sorry I've been late helping ya'll solve the mystery of this the picture I put up here the other day. My clue was, Those of you familiar with this particular kind of farming will know what this scene shows. The trick is to identify exactly where this farm is. |
| | Well, what's being farmed here, in addition to the grass (rye wheat, I assume), is wind. The shot is of a wind farm. |
| | I won't tell you where it is, exactly, yet. What I will tell you is that I shot it en route from San Francisco to London on 11 July 2004, at 9:15:41am. I shot the picture above at 9:18:08am. It would be cool, math-wise, if I had the departure and arrival times, but I don't have those. Still, the location shouldn't be too hard to figure out, assuming the plane is traveling at (I would guess) about 500 miles per hour. So, if you correctly guess where I shot the picture above, you can back-vector your way toward SFO and find the general location of the wind farm. |
| | I love the way digital photography involves all this useful EXIF data, in addition to the pictures themselves. In addition to the date and time, it tells me I shot the picture at f5.9 at 1/314 sec with an ISO Speed (ASA) of 100, in program exposure mode with the flash turned off, using patterned metering and no exposure bias. |
| | So I've got a few thousand more shots like these, all taken from the vantage commercial aircraft windows. And I'm thinking it would be fun to make them into a book, with digressions into geography, geology, weather, aviation, climate, culture... whatever I (or we) can dilate upon at greater width from 39,000 feet than down here on the ground. |
| | I also think the world needs a book that gives proper PR to the privileged perspective that flying provides to passengers lucky (or smart) enough to have a view. I realize that the Correct Thing for jaded flyers to do is take the aisle seats and sleep or work on laptops. And that many like window seats so they can close the shade and sleep leaning against the wall, instead of another passenger. But I know there are some of us — perhaps enough to make a market — who are thrilled by the view, and would like to know more about what-all is down there. |
| | Every time I fly over The West, for example, I see more of what geologists call "the picture": the four-dimensional story of the past half billion years, exposed by eroding rock. It would be fun to share some of that, and to invite others to join in with pictures and stories of their own. |
| | When I've talked about doing this before, I've been told it has already been done, by Gregory Dicum in Window Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air. I just got the book, and it's good. But most of the photographs are from space, not from passenger seats, and the subjects are general and regional. I think there's still an opening here for personal and specific stuff. One easily filled by a few interested bloggers with cameras. |
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Dirk De Bruyker - Re: Tuesday, March 1, 2005
3/1/2005; 8:19:12 PM (reads: 694, responses: 1)
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I like that idea - I'm a 'window seater' myself, I'm always looking for the views... e.g. planes from SFO to Europe are often going over Greenland/the Arctic and on a clear day that's always quite something. Btw, the previous picture then must be the from the wind farms around Livermore?
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Dirk De Bruyker - Re: Tuesday, March 1, 2005
3/1/2005; 8:19:44 PM (reads: 1016, responses: 0)
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I like that idea - I'm a 'window seater' myself, I'm always looking for the views... e.g. planes from SFO to Europe are often going over Greenland/the Arctic and on a clear day that's always quite something. Btw, the previous picture then must be from the wind farms around Livermore?
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Way back when, there was a course at Northwestern, Geography C313 aka "North America." Back in the dark ages, the class met once a week (Wednesday nights, 6:00-9:00pm), and was three hours of slides (bring your own cooler of refreshments). Each slide was another story, another town, another face, another escarpment. The tests were brutal. No text...all reality.
Just searched, and, by golly, Hudson is still teaching it. The salient bit:
"By far the most popular of these courses is Geography C313, a region-by-region exploration of North America. It is, Hudson says, a class in which he weaves stories about specific geographical locations 'so that people can understand these places.' The elements of the story of each spot come from a variety of sources, including his own readings and experiences and *photographic slides now numbering in the thousands that he has taken over the years*.
The classes are huge. While a normal Hudson offering might have 25 to 35 students, C313 had 338 last spring; 253 the year before that; and 219 the year before that. Ten minutes after the bell sounds for the first class, Hudson says, 'I'm talking about Newfoundland. By the last week of the course, we're in Hawaii.'
Link to the full story:
http://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/northwestern/spring2000/spring00NorthbyNU.htm
May be time to add "geography prof" to the "almost finished" list...
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Doc Searls - Re: Tuesday, March 1, 2005
3/2/2005; 9:51:53 AM (reads: 753, responses: 0)
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Greenland is so freaking spectacular. Amazing. Best shots I have of that aren't digital, though. In a box somewhere.
The wind farm shown isn't the Livermore one, which is Altamont, one of the biggest int he country. It's from north of there.
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kathlee - Re: Tuesday, March 1, 2005
3/2/2005; 1:49:55 PM (reads: 655, responses: 0)
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electric_pants - Re: Tuesday, March 1, 2005
3/2/2005; 3:00:41 PM (reads: 681, responses: 0)
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Perhaps Doc is thinking of something along the lines of, "Earth from Above" by Yann Arthus-Bertrand:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0810934957/
"Arthus-Bertrand, working with the support of UNESCO, has wandered the globe to gather this collection of more than 200 photographs, presented in a folio format. The images are uniformly striking, whether of stalagmite-like fans of algae spreading into the Mediterranean Sea, farmers working their fields in northern India, or destroyed Iraqi tanks littering the deserts of Kuwait." [from the Amazon review]
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Ross Button - Re: Tuesday, March 1, 2005
3/3/2005; 2:32:48 AM (reads: 986, responses: 0)
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I'm a window seater too. Don't travel that much 1 trip per month or two but I always take my camera.
I've snagged a few great ones and many that will fill hard drives for years to come.
I fly out of Ottawa so I get the Canadian perspetive. I have a great shot of Toronto I took at 10,000 ft on a really clear day.
I've got it up at http://gallery.button.ca named toronto cn tower.
I keep taking pics and storing them and taking them and storing them. Any ideas around doing something useful with them other than showing the kids gets my interest.
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