New Aerial Photography
Over the past week-end my wife and I decided to go visit the NC Museum of Art to have a look at the new exhibits (a must see if you are in the area, El Anattsui http://ncartmuseum.org/exhibitions/el_anatsui/). Before we went into the exhibit we took a stroll around the extensive and beautiful Museum Park, a.k.a. Art in the Park (again this is a must if you have not visited).
As we were headed back to the museum we saw a man walking around the grounds with a very large orange ballon suspended about 70 feet in the air . He was finishing up when we were heading back into the museum and my wife struck up a conversation with him. His name is Dan W. Bailey he hails from Maryland and he is down on assignment for the NCMA. He takes high-resolution aerial photography which he than overlays onto google maps or imbedded in google earth. As we are talking he explains that he “walks paths” as he is walking the camera is taking photos every 5 or 10 seconds. The results can be seen in his blog http://danwbailey.com/balloon-aerial-photography-test-3/.
So in a sense he is documenting live and current events at any given location. The possibilities are wonderful for post evaluations and analysis. Imagine using this technology to document an area or place. Because of the high resolution you can see a level of detail that is usually lost or unintelligible at that scale in google earth or maps.
On blog, (linked above) Dan describes his process and how to hack into a canon digital camera to make it take photos in rapid succession. He also has some really nice videos to accompany the pieces. They are sort of like “How to” videos. Also he has a link to GigaPan.org (http://gigapan.com/gigapans/104620). This is the software he uses to upload and showcase the works. If you are interested in the camera rig click here.
