It was originally rendered at the normal size (216mp), but I decided to cut the center out and use the circular Mandala layout. Being that its my first use of tessellated space I decided to use an archetype that represents rebirth.
Read more about this project here
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1/2/2008 || 10:58 pm
Comparative Front Pages: Washington Post / Philadelphia Inquirer
On March 26, 2007, the Philadelphia Inquirer published David Montgomery’s Here Be Dragons article. That morning I received a phone call from one of my best friends who happened to be in Philadelphia on business. He excitedly informed me that one of my maps was on the cover of a section in the Philadelphia Inquirer. I asked him to purchase as many copies as possible and about a month later I picked up the six copies from his house. My housemate let me borrow his camera to take an overhead photograph of the two newspaper articles side by side. When the housemate moved out a few months ago he gave me all of his photographs that he had on his computer and I found this photograph that I had forgotten about. What I found to be the most interesting aspect is the size of the map that was used in Philadelphia, the change of the article’s name, the movement from “Style” to “Health & Science.” I’ve tried to track down other syndications, but so far only the Philadelphia Inquirer has been obtained. The article itself has already been deaccessioned from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s website.
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: new year, new direction?
4/30/2007 || 9:16 am
Capitol Hill Mandala, draft #2
Read more about this commission & the first draft here. The client wanted more of their house and I hope this version will suffice!
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Columbia Heights Quilt
4/9/2007 || 3:27 pm
Capitol Hill Mandala, first draft
A couple weeks ago a visitor contacted me about places where she could see my maps printed out. After finding that she ived here in DC, I invited her & her husband over to look at some of the maps I have in my house. After viewing the lot, they really liked the one I made of Park City, Utah and asked if I would make one of their house that looked similar. This is the first draft. I will post the subsequent drafts as they are made….
The development of the tile I used to for this draft is actually something akin to an advancement in my own artistic endeavors. I originally made two tiles to be used- one that featured a diamond and the other featured a 16 sided polygon. I ended up using the 16-sided polygon to surround the house because it looked similar to the centers of the maps I’ve created using the Octagon Quilt Projection. The advancement I speak of is that by using an 16 sided polygon shape and having octagonal symmetry, I, for the first time, have created a unique geometric illusion.
In the Park City map I used a hexagon to outline the house and as one moves their eyes around the map they can see the hexagon rotates in conjunction with the symmetry used in the map. The illusion is that the houses rotate inside of the polygon but the polygon itself does not!
For example, along 45 degree line of symmetry, a hexagon or diamond would be rotated 45 degrees (while still being a hexagon or diamond in shape), however, in this map the polygon does not rotate because the polygon has exactly twice the number of lines of symmetry being employed in the map. Only upon closer inspection can one see that the contents of the polygon rotate along the lines of symmetry, while the polygon itself does not.
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Wichita Quilt
2/28/2007 || 11:30 pm
Denver Mandala
Unlike my two most recent maps which were created in Photoshop from a previously made Quilt projection, this map was originally made on July 15, 2005. As I stated about a year ago, I didn’t put it on-line originally because I was unhappy with how it looked. Well times change and so does my taste in what I think looks pleasing….
View the Google Map of downtown Denver, Colorado
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Little Rock Quilt
2/27/2007 || 4:46 pm
Philly Mandala #2
When processing Philly Quilt #2 for my on-line store I made this derivative map in Photoshop.
View the Google Map of downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Good Hope Quilt #3
2/24/2007 || 4:18 pm
Houston Mandala
When processing Houston Quilt for my on-line store I made this derivative map in Photoshop.
View the Google Map of downtown Houston, Texas
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Atlanta Quilt #3, The Water Cone, Green Jews campaign against party’s Israel divestment resolution
11/20/2006 || 12:42 pm
Bangkok Mandala
This map was commissioned for Becky Weber. It is to be given away as a gift.
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: GWU Quilt #3
1/13/2006 || 8:34 am
Philly Mandala
comments to be added shortly…
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10/24/2005 || 7:13 am
White House Mandala
I fixed the lighting problem that plagued my last two renderings and the result is probably one of my favorite mandalas yet (my favorite is still the Ballwin mandala). I was able to fix the lighting issue by pulling the light source farther away from the imagery and then making the light source brighter. The result is more diffusion of the light without the center being bleached out. If you look at the rendering details below, you can see the the center of the rendering is the Ellipse and without realizing it, I made an circle out of the Ellipse 
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10/22/2005 || 4:26 pm
Me, Maui, Mall Mandala
I found out this morning that it only takes about 2-4 hours to render these mandalas, so I’ve decided to make one more! So much faster than the 8-12 hours they normally take
This rendering suffers from the same problems that plagued the last mandala rendering, the poor choice of lighting. Yet due to the nature of the source imagery used in this rendering, the light gradient isn’t as a big of an issue. Being my 3rd self-portrait, I am please how it turned out, but I don’t like using my name in the title of a rendering, but “self-portrait mandala” just didn’t sound right.
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10/21/2005 || 7:09 pm
Adams Morgan Mandala
I like this rendering, but the way I setup the lighting is not the way I wanted it to look. Its far to bleached out at the center… and well, I’ve never like the colors in this imagery in the first place. The reason why this took place is because I saved the file after making the last mandala rendering, the Buena Park Mandala…
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10/7/2005 || 6:37 pm
It’s Up - Check it Out!
This print was displayed at MOCA DC/A&M Gallery
Located at 1054 31st St., NW, Canal Square
Hours: Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat - 1-6pm Until October 28th, 2005
Jefferson Mandala - signed 30X20 Framed Kodak PerfectTouch Print
Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Congress Passes District's Budget
8/15/2005 || 7:22 am
Buena Park Mandala
I really don’t dig how this one turned out. It’s too dark for my taste and you can’t really see much detail in the final product. I do like the other Buena Park renderings much better.
I need to get some new imagery because I’m not very happy with what has been rendered recently. I think it boils down to needing a new template that reflects my current emotions a bit more. And well, it’s quite ironic that the Buena Park imagery does has a roller coaster inside of it But really, I want to start using some more human figures and new perspectives. I like that…new perspectives on the world, because, after all, that is what I’m creating isn’t it?
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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Brussels & the American Candidate
8/14/2005 || 11:23 pm
Boston Mandala
This rendering differs from the rest of the Mandala Project because I rendered it in 3:2 aspect ratio instead of the regular square. I really like the way the high number of reflections create an optical illusion of a circle when the rendering is a series of reflected squares. Reminds me of that Jung quote I found…
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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: version 3.0, g-town
7/26/2005 || 12:01 pm
The Washington National Cathedral Mandala
I used the same imagery that I used to make the The Washington National Cathedral Lenz, but instead of placing the imagery into the Lenz template, I just used the 4 plane mandala template. The 4 planes then reflect 2 times giving a total of 8 lines of radial symmetry. What I like the most about this rendering is that I bent the Cathedral! I should have included that in one of the screenshots above because I have a small series of bent buildings that I’ve created in the last year or so. Of course my favorite is the White House (”Get Bent Bush!”). I’ll try to put the bent Cathedral on-line shortly.
Nonetheless, I think it looks awesome (as usual), but this rendering I actually over-projected by making the rendering larger than it needed to be. The beauty of the raster projection process is that I can merely scale down the final product in photoshop to correct it. Yet, this has happened time and time again with my most recent mandalas. I need to do the math before rendering them to make sure I don’t have to down sample each rendering. Naw— Go big!
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7/18/2005 || 12:02 pm
Ballwin Mandala
This rendering turned out nicely, although I rendered it too large and had to scale down the projection to remove some pixilation. This rendering is also the first derivative of the Ballwin Lenz #2, and I was able to keep my old apartment building at 148 G Cumberland Park Ln. within the rendering. You gotta love art that hits close to home! (I say this everytime!!!!)
View my posting on the first Ballwin rendering.
View my posting on the second Ballwin rendering.
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6/24/2005 || 10:57 pm
DC Mandala
This rendering turned out well. I find it interesting that this rendering shares the same reflection point as the Mall Quilt second derivative. I can’t sell this one because it theoretically belongs to space imaging, but I’ll definitely keep this one around for donation/education purposes.
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6/22/2005 || 12:09 am
Baltimore Mandala Animated
Its nice to take a good healthy spin & zoom….
This is my first animated mandala, and I am quite pleased with the results.
…I wonder what tomorrow will bring!
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6/21/2005 || 2:25 pm
Baltimore Mandala
The way the inner harbor is reflected makes this rendering all the more beautiful. There is a small artifact in the center of this image that creates a found focal point that, when printed out, will draw the viewer’s eyes directly to the center of the rendering. This rendering is also the first rendering that I actually made too big! When looking at it’s full 9,000 X 9,000 size, the ground looks slightly fuzzy, yet this is not really a problem! The way I look at it is that I might as well make it as big as possible because I can always shrink it without any degradation. I wonder what I’ll make next!
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6/20/2005 || 6:32 pm
Ganges Mandala
Not too shabby I like the way the rivers intertwine and form braided streams. This manipulated satellite image is probably the most famous of all the “Earth As Art” collection. It was used for the cover of the Library of Congress flyer as well as the UNEP 2004 Environment Report. I have already sold a print of this one. Its the purple & green!
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6/16/2005 || 10:37 pm
Jefferson Mandala - 2nd derivative
I can’t go much further, or can I?
–probably to about 360X and then it will look like a vinyl record
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6/14/2005 || 6:57 am
911 Mandala
Last week I made a rendering I unofficially called “the circle of life,” and this week I’ve made a “circle of death” (above). Last week’s “circle of life” was at the center of the rendering (the GWU Hospital), and this one has the circle of death around the edge of the mandala in the form of the smoke of the World Trade Towers burning. The exact site of the World Trade Center falls just outside of this rendering, in Post 911 Reflection #3 you can see a better, albeit abstracted, view of what New York City looked like September 15th, 2001. While the planes were grounded throughout the United States, the IKONOS satellite was floating silently by recording the space, place, time, and recent history.
Time to go to Capitol Hill to help give a briefing on Geographic Management Systems
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6/12/2005 || 6:15 pm
Jefferson Mandala
This rendering marks two significant pinnacles in my geographic artistry.
The biggest step is of making a complete mandala. Before my mandalas were only reflected 4 ways (north, south, east, west) , and now I am achieving reflections of over 8 ways (north-north east, east-north east, etc), which make the final products so much more intricate and in my opinion, far superior to my older maps.
Secondly, the source imagery used for this image was what I’d like to call first derivative geospatial imagery. I have coined term to signify that the source imagery is the first derivation of a previously rendered image. In the image above, I used the rendered imagery from the center of the Mall Quilt as my source imagery for this rendering.
With source imagery’s self-similar design it’s closer to the definition of a fractal. You can zoom into a fractal to infinite, and what I think I’ve created is in effect a geographic fractal where I can take derivatives of renderings and reproject them into infinity. Each derivation will be more reflected and abstract, but I will not lose the spatial resolution so long as the final rendered dimensions are not larger than the source imagery dimensions multiplied by the number of times the source imagery is completely shown.
For example, the source imagery used to make the image above was 6000X6000 pixels, however the image above was rendered at 12000X12000 pixels. I am able to reproject the imagery larger because the actual source imagery is used multiple times within the image and in essence is doubled by the way the source imagery tessellates. Notice how you see a mirror of the Jefferson Memorial (aka 2x for every reflection), the mirroring process allows for the geographic tessellation to not lose spatial resolution when the image is finally rendered. Theoretically, I could cut out the center of this rendering, and use for my next rendering, and it would technically be considered second derivative geospatial imagery…and I might just do that
If this is too confusing, I’m sorry. I too am still trying to get my mind around this concept. Regardless, expect some very beautiful renderings in the near future!
View the map’s close-up details using the interactive Flash application called Zoomify
View the Google Map of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC
This map was printed over a million times in newspapers around the world.
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The Daily Render: A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, & Future
