The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

Phoenix Quilt
|| 4/9/2009 || 12:31 pm || Comments Off on Phoenix Quilt || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Phoenix Quilt by Nikolas R. Schiller

Over the years I’ve done my best to map every major city throughout the United States. Some cities & states withhold their imagery from the public domain and I’ve been unable to map those geographies (I’m looking you at Vermont!). While Tuscon, Arizona was released to the public a few years back, Phoenix, the primary city of Arizona, was not released until sometime last year. I don’t get updates of when new imagery is released in the public domain, which has kept me in the dark about when other cities are releasing new imagery, otherwise I would have mapped Phoenix sooner.

For this map I decided to employ the Diamond Quilt Projection on the area around downtown Phoenix. The source aerial photography was originally .8 feet per pixel, but in order to capture more of the downtown area I reduced the spatial resolution of the source imagery to cover more area. In doing so, I have most of the important buildings in downtown Phoenix. Known as Cooper Square, the buildings in this map include Chase Field, U.S. Airways Center, Sandra Day O’Connor US District Court, Bank of America Tower, City Hall, Maricopa County government buildings, Phoenix Civic Center, and Patriot Square Park. Unlike most of my state capital maps, the Phoenix state capitol is located to the west and I will probably have to go back and make a subsequent map so I can include it in my ongoing series of state capitol buildings.

Anyways, I resampled a portion of this map and will post it tomorrow.

View the Google Map of downtown Phoenix, Arizona

: detail :
A location somewhere within the map

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Commission: Yankee Stadium Quilt
|| 12/19/2008 || 1:51 pm || Comments Off on Commission: Yankee Stadium Quilt || ||

: rendered at 9,000 X 6,000 :
Yankee Stadium by Nikolas R. Schiller

At the beginning of the week I received an inquiry about making this map. It’s intended to be a gift for the client’s friend who’s a big Yankees fan. I was unsure if I’d be able to obtain the newest imagery featuring the new Yankee stadium, but since the client felt the friend had spent more time in the old stadium, the newest of the imagery was not an issue. I went with .5 meters per pixel imagery from April, 2006. There was a second set of imagery of the area at lower spatial resolution, but I liked the coloring on this imagery better and went with it. This is my first map of the Bronx borough of New York City and for 2009 I am planning on mapping the rest of the boroughs.

Like my previous commission I was able to modify the source aerial photography so that the nearby outdoor track has been converted into a heart. I debated on modifing the coloration so that the pinkness of the heart (below) would be more pronounced, but I opted to follow my current style of non-modification. Yet this inclusion of the heart motif is something that I find to be an unique addition to my current map design. I am adjusting the imagery to not only create a geometrically perfect design, but literally adding a bit of love to it. An aerial landscape design of love, so to speak.

There is also a sense of transition in this map. By the varying degree of translational symmetry placed upon the the actual stadium, there appears to be an architectural metamorphosis taking place. Where the old stadium is becoming a new stadium. And some day in the future, when it’s time that I make the next map of Yankee Stadium, with newer contemporary imagery, it will be a new stadium. But will the heart (track) still be there in the future? Will development change the love of the geography? I don’t think so. Yet in making this map for the client, I’ve captured the love between two people (and probably thousands of others) that will never change.

Unlike my previous commissioned map, which was printed at 32″x48″ on stretched canvas, this Hexagon Quilt Project map will be printed a bit smaller at 10″x16″ on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl paper. If you are interested in obtaining a custom map, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

View the Google Map of Yankee Stadium in the Bronx

: detail :
A heart created next to Yankee Stadium

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Democratic National Convention 2008 – Photos from Day Three
|| 8/28/2008 || 11:49 pm || Comments Off on Democratic National Convention 2008 – Photos from Day Three || ||

I was able to secure a ticket to see Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at Invecso Field. Below are the photos I took of the event. I will note that the 5th floor at the stadium did not sell beer, but the lower floors of stadium did. Still unequal…

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Madison Square Garden Quilt
|| 6/10/2008 || 6:17 pm || Comments Off on Madison Square Garden Quilt || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Madison Square Garden Quilt by Nikolas R. Schiller

Using my new procedure, I pre-rendered 2 tiles to create this third derivative map of Madison Square Garden in Midtown Manhattan. It looks very similar to Hirshhorn Quilt (they are both circular buildings) but they are composed of aerial photographs taken at different spatial scales. The NYC imagery has been downsampled to 2ft per pixel compared to DC’s imagery which is at 6 inches per pixel or a difference of about 16 times less detail (I think). Up next will probably be the New York Public Library, which was actually in the first tessellation, but dropped from the second.

View the Google Map of Madison Square Garden in New York City.

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Saint Louis Lenz Animation
|| 4/8/2008 || 3:46 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Screen grab links to a 32-second 11.5mb Quicktime Movie

Using the same tessellation that was used in Saint Louis Quilt #5, I created this animation featuring a fish-eye-like glass sphere hovering over the imagery (see Lenz Projection). The sphere’s optics create a +200% magnification of the imagery, so as the sphere moves around in the animation the abstract geography is revealed below in close-up detail. There is a new on-line mapping service in Japan that features this visual element, but I am proud to say that I’ve been making similar maps for nearly 5 years now. My animation’s style features more angular refraction within the sphere to give a sense of roundness to a flat surface. My animation also slightly suffers from over-projection within the sphere but I personally like the pixilated effect that is created.

Click here to watch / download the animation.

Saint Louis Quilt #5
|| 4/6/2008 || 11:48 am || Comments Off on Saint Louis Quilt #5 || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Saint Louis Quilt #5

This map of downtown Saint Louis, Missouri is the first to use imagery from 2006. I have now made maps of downtown Saint Louis that show the downtown area at three specific periods in time in the last 6 years. In the near future, I might made a montage of how the geography has changed using familiar portions of these maps. It think it would look very interesting. As I mentioned before, I like the way that I’ve been able to capture the Busch Stadium’s progression over time.

View the Google Map of downtown Saint Louis, Missouri.

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Memphis Cross
|| 4/5/2008 || 5:52 pm || Comments Off on Memphis Cross || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Memphis Cross

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and I decided to make a map the area around the site of the memorial. I made a similar cross a month ago using imagery from the Mount Pleasant neighborhood in Washington, DC and another cross-like map in the summer of 2005. Upon comparing the three, I feel that Mount Pleasant Cross looks more like a traditional cross because the reflection on 16th street forms the familiar shape. When preparing the imagery I adjusted the line of symmetry in the source tessellation to create a near perfect stadium reflection. In the current Google Maps imagery, which is newer than this map’s imagery, the dome of the stadium has Fedex Field printed across the top. Fortunately, the illusion of the symmetrical stadium was not ruined by corporate branding.

View the Google Map of Memphis, Tennessee.

Lorraine Motel / National Civil Rights Museum Detail

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Saint Louis Quilt #4
|| 4/3/2008 || 4:26 pm || Comments Off on Saint Louis Quilt #4 || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Saint Louis Quilt #4

Unlike the previous three maps of Saint Louis which use imagery from 2002, this map uses poor quality imagery from 2005. I really like how the old Busch Stadium shows up and the new Busch Stadium is still being constructed. Up next will be another map of downtown Saint Louis, but will feature better quality aerial photography from 2006 and the new Busch Stadium. The 2006 aerial photography was used in my Geospatial Natal Chart that I made in December, as well as the two most recent maps of my childhood neighborhood in Ballwin, Missouri.

View the Google Map of downtown Saint Louis, Missouri.

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University of Texas at Austin Quilt #3
|| 6/23/2007 || 3:19 pm || Comments Off on University of Texas at Austin Quilt #3 || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

Read more about the process used to make the map here.

View the Google Map of the University of Texas at Austin

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University of Texas at Austin Quilt #2
|| 6/22/2007 || 3:14 pm || Comments Off on University of Texas at Austin Quilt #2 || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

Read more about the process used to make the map here.

View the Google Map of the University of Texas at Austin

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Nikolas Schiller is a second-class American citizen living in America's last colony, Washington, DC. This blog is my on-line repository of what I have created or found on-line since May of 2004. If you have any questions or comments, please contact: