I’ve only made one other map with clouds. Yet in that map the clouds did not take on any extra meaning beyond the subtle religious commentary on behalf of the Mormon Church. Yet this map relates to a conversation I had with my sister when she moved to Tampa Florida to teach at the University of South Florida. I asked “Are you prepared for a hurricane?” and her answer was what I expected, “Not yet.” The synthetic clouds in this map represent her likelihood of her experiencing a hurricane while living in Florida. I was unable to make the clouds look like a hurricane per se, but I was able to make them symmetrical, which aesthetically I like better. Regardless, I am worried about a major hurricane hitting Tampa and my sister being in the middle of it. Ironically, my two sisters & I all live in geographic locations that have some level of risk to them: one sister lives in San Francisco (earthquake), the other sister lives in Tampa (hurricane), and I live in Washington, DC (terrorism). Good thing my mom still lives in the midwest…
This rendering took 27 hours to complete, and it’s only half the normal size I usually make my maps. I originally tried to make it at the normal size(216 megapixels), but after 5 minutes and only 5 lines rendered, I decided to cancel the rendering and make it only half size. The reason for the extra rendering time is the nature of how the clouds are made. The depth of each ray of light that hits the clouds has to be determined, which slows down the entire rendering considerably.
View the Google Map of University of South Florida.
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