the Art of Geography weblog

Forest Park map updated

erik — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 02:59:04 +0000

Panel #1, the southern-most of the 4 panel mapset has been updated thanks to feedback from users of the map. Thank you S.H., J.R., E.S., and others who wrote in.

http://www.artofgeography.com/maps/fp/

Introducing Walk There! 50 treks in and around Portland and Vancouver

erik — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:14:55 +0000

From www.oregonmetro.gov

“Introducing Walk There! Metro’s new guide to great places to walk in the Portland-Vancouver area. The book will lead you on 50 explorations of newly acquired urban natural areas, scenic parks, historic neighborhoods and fascinating main streets. Detailed maps and route descriptions will help you discover the region’s rich history and varied landscapes while you enjoy the benefits of walking.

Walking is one of the easiest and most effective activities you can do to tighten your wallet and your waistline. If you drive less, you save more by avoiding the costs of gasoline and parking. Walking is one of the safest activities you can do to maintain your health. Mile for mile you burn as many calories walking as you would jogging, but with far less stress on your joints. Walking also helps the environment. You can reduce your carbon footprint by shifting short trips from your car to your feet.

Metro developed the new guide in partnership with local governments and community groups and with support from Kaiser Permanente. The book will be distributed through health education classes and community walking events and programs. The 50 walking route maps and descriptions are available in a pocket-sized book or for download…”

The culmination of a tremendous effort by a wide-ranging team, I am pleased to have had the opportunity to design the walking maps in this guide.

Art of Geography project: maps for Portland Forest Hikes: Twenty Close-In Wilderness Walks

erik — Fri, 30 May 2008 02:03:37 +0000

Start! Walking America: The American Heart Association’s National Start! Walking Day Is today

erik — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:22:46 +0000

April 16 is the American Heart Association’s National Start! Walking Day. The call to action is simple: Americans should fit 30 minutes of walking into their workday.Studies reveal that American jobs have become more sedentary and that employees are working 164 more hours a year than they did 20 years ago. The Start! movement works with employers and the 142 million Americans in the workplace to create a culture of walking before, during or after work.”Incorporating walking into your daily routine is one of the easiest changes you can make. You can hop off the bus or subway a stop or two earlier; you can take the stairs at work or park farther away,” said American Heart Association President Dr. Daniel Jones. “There are lots of little ways to incorporate a few more steps, which can truly have life-changing results.”http://sev.prnewswire.com/health-care-hospitals/20080415/DC1953415042008-1.html

University of Arizona SBS Developments magazine uses Art of Geography painting

erik — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 04:20:08 +0000

Thank you to Lori Harwood and Christine Scheer for picking some Art of Geography art for the cover of their magazine, and reproducing the color/tonality so well.

Announcing the new Forest Park map

erik — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:37:30 +0000

Just in time for the first trillium blossoms of spring, the Forest Park map is ready for general use. This map went through several months of development and a couple months of beta testing. The current version of the map is v615 — if you have an older version, make sure to download the latest from
http://www.artofgeography.com/maps/fp/. How can you tell what version you have? The version number is a small notation on the right side under the title of panel 4.

I can safely say this is the best map I’ve made to date (although there are maps in the pipeline which may top this). Every aspect of my park map approach has been refined, improved, and tested.

Some notes on the map:

The technique for arriving at more accurate trail paths using LiDAR is described in an article I wrote recently.

One of the challenges of the Forest Park map is that the park is very long and skinny, yet contains over 75 miles of trails (see image to right of the park as it would look in a single panel).

I went to great lengths to ensure that the map would be usable by someone with just an average letter-size color printer. By average I mean a color inkjet printer that sells for $50-$80 (printers in this class can print at over 750 dots per inch, which should be fine for these maps). In order to ensure this level of usability, the map was broken into four panels, each of which is designed to be readable on a letter-size piece of paper (21.4 cm x 28 cm for European readers). One side-effect of straining every facet of the map layout to meet this goal is that the title/scale/compass information is not positioned in the same place on every panel.

If you wanted to make the map pages more portable, you could use double-sided matte paper and print panels 1 and 3 on one sheet of paper, and panels 2 and 4 on the second (that way you can still overlap adjacent panels). If you have an Epson printer, I find that Epson’s heavyweight matte paper works very well for this map, and recommend printing (in the print dialog box) with the highest quality setting that is available for the paper you are using. Printing the maps in black and white won’t work very well–there’s too much information which is designed around color.

One goal of the map was to facilitate using public transit to access the park. So three MAX stops are shown, as are bus stops along the eastern edge of the park. The Trimet bus-stop (and stop IDs) are not shown for every single bus line in the map extent, as it would overwhelm the map with transit info, most of which would not be relevant.

If you want to link to the map, the permanent URL to use is not this weblog post but http://www.artofgeography.com/maps/fp/

–erik

Pocket Virtual Worlds

erik — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:59:40 +0000

Pocket Virtual Worlds: “The technology, a result of a partnership between Case Western Reserve and Bowling Green, uses a mobile device to explore photograph-based virtual worlds. There’s no GPS, nor Wi-Fi used, as I understand it, for the navigation of the worlds. It’s not clear how the datasets are knit together. Even if I don’t quite follow how it works, the New Media Consortium identified it as one of six emerging technologies in its 2008 Horizon Report. The end use?

This three-dimensional photographic virtual world is likely to be introduced to higher education and specific organizations within the next five years.

- Pocket Virtual Worlds website (flash demo available)

- The BG News“

(Via All Points Blog.)

Another way to stitch panoramas using Photoshop

erik — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:03:51 +0000

Creating Panoramic Images in Photoshop CS3 using Auto-align Layers

The Auto-Align Layers feature is a great new feature that will make assembling your panoramic pictures a breeze

via Creative Mac

December was art month at the Art of Geography

erik — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 03:10:12 +0000

December was art month at the Art of Geography. A two foot square mounted print of Hydromancy at the antipodes of Elysium sold at a gallery, and another painting was selected by a magazine to use on their cover. I will post the details of the magazine issue as soon as it comes out.

New non-destructive image editor: Naked Light

erik — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:27:44 +0000

New non-destructive image editor: Naked Light: “Naked Light, a unique new image editor, offers a simplistic interface as well as advanced features; Naked Light will allow users to take advantage of non-destructive image editing. The application is advertised as re-inventing how image editing works, featuring node-based compositing and live filters, as well as a concept called ‘Infinite Resolution…

Requires OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

(Via The Macintosh News Network.)