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This final edition is derived from sampled imagery from the previous two renderings. I chose the layout for this version based on the beautiful geometric design that is created at the center of the map. These two recursive samplings have created an almost crystalline map of the area.

View the Google Map of Oakland Habour.

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View the rest of the details:

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This version of the map is derived from sampled imagery from the previous map to create this Octagon Quilt Projection map of Oakland. The recursive sampling employed in this map creates a more geometric geography.

View the Google Map of Oakland Habour.

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View the rest of the details:

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This week I am traveling to the West Coast to do research on the medical cannabis industry. One of the places I hope to tour is Harborside Health Center, which is considered the best dispensary in the United States.

I was curious to find out where the facility was located in Oakland and upon downloading the imagery, I realized that it’s location has all the ingredients for an interesting map: a highway, a harbor, and the aerial photography is crisp and unpixilated.

View the Google Map of Oakland Habour. This map uses the same imagery that Google is currently using.

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When the 2005 USGS aerial photography was released to the public in the spring of 2007 there were a few places that were censored through pixilation. On this blog I documented how the White House was censored. I documented how the U.S. Capitol was censored. And I even experimented with a QR-Code to show that the Washington Monument was censored. After doing some exploration within the newly obtained 2008 Washington, DC orthophotography, I discovered that the White House and the U.S. Capitol are STILL censored.

However, now that the construction of the new visitors center at the Washington Monument has been completed, which is the reason, I am told, why the Washington Monument was originally censored in the 2005 imagery, the imagery of the monument is now available without pixilation. Moreover, its the exact same imagery that is being used on Google Maps. While I expect to showcase the censorship of the White House & U.S. Capitol in some future entries, I decided to make make my first map of this new dataset of the Washington Monument because I wasn’t able to make it using the last batch of imagery.

To construct this map, I first rendered a full-size Hexagon Quilt Projection map using the original imagery, then sampled a portion of the resulting map, and used the sampled portion to create this derivative map. I chose to sample the portion in the first map because of two underlying aspects of the map. First, I really liked the way the shadows of the Washington Monument combined together. Secondly, I liked the way the apex of the Washington Monument was combined (see detail below) to create a pyramid. Over the years I have enjoyed playing with the notion of aerial & architectural chiaroscuro, as in, using shadows generated by buildings within the original aerial photography to create a new, larger shadow. This map embodies this ongoing design element perfectly.

View the Google Map of the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

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View the rest of the details:

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After making eight different drafts, the client liked a modified version the best. Using derivative imagery from Draft #4, I was able to create the map above. It features the area around the fountain at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The client is having this map printed at 20″ x 16″ so the final printed version will look slightly different than the version above. As always, contact me if you interested in having a custom map created for you.

View the Google Map of the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

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View the rest of the details:

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A few days ago I started on a new commissioned map of the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The client made it somewhat easier for me because they were interested in either a Hexagon Quilt Projection map (above) or an Octagon Quilt Projection map (below). Unlike the previous two drafts, today’s drafts feature a far-away view of the area immediately around the Sculpture Garden.

View the Google Map of the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art

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:: Rendered at 900 x 600 ::

The other day I started on a new commissioned map of the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The client made it somewhat easier for me because they were interested in either a Hexagon Quilt Projection map (above) or an Octagon Quilt Projection map (below). Like the previous two drafts, today’s drafts feature a close-up view of the area around the Sculpture Garden.

View the Google Map of the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art

:: Rendered at 900 x 600 ::

:: Rendered at 900 x 600 ::

Yesterday I started on a new commissioned map of the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The client made it somewhat easier for me because they were interested in either a Hexagon Quilt Projection map (above) or an Octagon Quilt Projection map (below). Unlike yesterday’s two drafts, today’s drafts feature a close-up view of the area immediately around the Sculpture Garden. Tomorrow I plan on posting two more drafts featuring the close-up imagery…..

View the Google Map of the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art

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:: Rendered at 900 x 600 ::

Today I started on a new commissioned map. The client desires a map of the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Earlier this afternoon I e-mailed a series of eight draft maps so that they could select which one they liked best. The client made it somewhat easy for me because they were interested in either a Hexagon Quilt Projection map (above) or an Octagon Quilt Projection map (below). However, I made the choice somewhat more difficult by providing a map of the location at different spatial scales. The two drafts shown here reveal more of the area around the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art, while tomorrow’s drafts will show the area close up. Over the week I plan on posting the rest of these draft maps, and like my previous commissioned map, the final map of the series will be the one that gets printed out.

View the Google Map of the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art

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Of the draft maps created for this series, it was the scaled down version of Tessellation Number Three that was ultimately chosen. Up next, a photo of the map printed on fabric :-)

Click here to view the Google Map of Sandy Spring Friends School in Montgomery County, Maryland .

: Close-up Detail of the Sandy Spring Friends School :

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The last two maps I created for this commission feature identical tessellations of the area around the Sandy Spring Friends School in Maryland, but shown at two different spatial scales.

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: rendered at 900 X 600 :

These two maps feature identical tessellations of the area around the Sandy Spring Friends School in Maryland, but shown at two different spatial scales.

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: rendered at 900 X 600 :

These two maps feature identical tessellations of the area around the Sandy Spring Friends School in Maryland, but shown at two different spatial scales and rotate 22.5 degrees.

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: rendered at 900 X 600 :

This map features a different tessellation of the area around the Sandy Spring Friends School in Maryland.

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I was recently commissioned by a person who wishes to have me a make a map of Sandy Spring Friends School as a gift for their friend. The person asked explicitly for a map on fabric that uses the Octagon Quilt Projection. This made the process somewhat easier for me because all I needed to do was create different tessellations of the aerial photography around the school. Often the client does not know the map design they desire most, so I have to spend extra time rendering different designs based off of one or two tessellations. This time around I was able to focus on making numerous tessellations for the client to choose from.

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Continuing on the theme of my last map, I decided to focus on the merging of the two Metro trains for this version. To create this map I first sampled a portion of Metro Crash Quilt, then I used that portion to create an intermediate map (that I chose to not publish), which I then sampled again to create this fractal Hexagon Quilt Projection map. This process of recursive sampling allowed me to focus more and more on the portion of the map where the two train merge together. The result is a weaved pattern of train tracks and merging Metro cars; a far more intricate map than my previous version. What is lost, however, is the area around the crash site and the crash site itself, in their place are more trains and more train track. I have sampled a portion of this map and am in the process of seeing what a third iteration will look like.

View the Google Map of the crash site in upper Northeast Washington, DC.

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As I stated before, I decided to make a map of the location of where the Metro crash took place. When preparing the imagery I did my best to include both the train and the exact site of the collision, but when it came to trying out different Quilt Projection designs, I found the Square Quilt Projection to have a very interesting line of symmetry– the Metro train itself.

While this map is derived from orthophotography, which essentially flattens out the terrain, the train’s laterally merging together on a line of symmetry creates a different viewing approach to the train. Since I cannot replicate the Metro train on top of another Metro train (nor would I really want to or even have access to the aerial photos of the crash itself), this line of symmetry approach offers a stylized (albeit sad) way to show the merger of two trains.

The aim of this map was to document the location of this tragedy, but I was able to add more than I expected to the final result; a simulated merger of two trains. Had there not been a random train passing through the area on that day in March of 2005, this map would be devoid of the subject of it’s creation and only show the location of the tragedy.

I am working on a second iteration of this map which should be ready shortly.

View the Google Map of the crash site in upper Northeast Washington, DC.

: detail of the crash site with two Metro trains merging together :

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

Using this portion of Front Range Quilt, I created this derivative map. I sampled that portion because I like the nature of how the shadows of the ridge presented themselves and I wanted to include the tarn at the base of Andrews Glacier. I opted for the Dodecagon Quilt Projection because I felt it that it would work nicely since I am not trying to capture any specific buildings or streets in the source imagery (there are none!).

View the Google Map of the Front Range in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.

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So I never got around to making a map of downtown Birmingham, Alabama, but I still plan on doing so. Instead I decided to seek out a somewhat new place and try out a new style. For years I have been reticent about making a map that it not composed of an urban area. I always thought that it was the buildings and the streets that gave each map its intrinsic uniqueness, but with this map, I have branched out, tried something new, and am pleasantly surprised with the results.

Years ago I posted a topographic map of Rocky Mountain National Park featuring the first mountains I ever climbed as a child. It was also the first topographic map posted this to this blog, and to continue this line of thought, I was delighted to find that the imagery was available to create the first map of its type. Instead of the aerial photography being too dull to be worthy of a map, I found it interesting that the shadows created by the ridge line added some aerial chiaroscuro. Moreover, upon closer examination, due to the spatial resolution of the source aerial photography, you can actually make out the trails crisscrossing through the forest. While they don’t appear as well as a highway or skyscraper, the trails and shadows help make create a map that I am happy to publish here.

Another striking feature of the imagery is the color tone of the tarn at the base of Andrews Glacier. This blue/green lake adds a unique color contrast to the somewhat monotone yellow hue of the rocky terrain. I do, however, wish there was a bit more color contrast between the east side of the continental divide and the west side of the continental divide that I’ve seen when I’ve stood atop these mountains. I also kinda wish, for once, that the aerial photography wasn’t taken from nadir, rather I wish it was taken at an oblique angle because we’d be able to see more elevation contrast between the various mountain peaks. However, since I have hiked these mountains, I know the continental divide shown in this aerial photography traverses north and south and the shadows are only formed from the ridges extending west from the continental divide. This makes it slightly easier to differentiate where the ridges are, but not where the peaks are. Anyways, I’ve decided to sample a portion of this imagery and will make another iteration of this map shortly.

View the Google Map of the Front Range in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Curiously, the imagery used on Google Maps shows the area during the winter time and covered in snow.

: detail of Andrews Glacier :

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Using this portion of Fashion District Quilt, I composed this derivative map. I chose this layout because I liked the way the tessellation created almost-circular building clusters.

View the Google Map of the Fashion District in Los Angeles, California

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