The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden Quilt [COMMISSIONED MAP]
|| 10/16/2009 || 3:11 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

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National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

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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Revisiting the Dupont Lenz Quilt Animation
|| 7/17/2009 || 7:16 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

Embedded from Facebook

In August of 2007 I posted the Quicktime Movie of Dupont Lenz Quilt Animation on this blog. I had not joined YouTube yet, nor had I released the contents of this website to search engines, so only recently have I begun to port some of my animations to other websites. Today I decided to upload the animation to Facebook and to YouTube.

The animation uses same layout from my map “Dupont Circle Quilt 2005.” The 30 second animation features two 15 second segments of the same imagery shown from two different perspectives. The modified aerial photography of Dupont Circle in Washington, DC is magnified using transparent glass spheres to create unique cartographic perspective.

Related Animations:

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West Sahara Lake Circles Quilt
|| 3/4/2009 || 1:05 pm || Comments Off on West Sahara Lake Circles Quilt || ||

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West Sahara Lake Circles Quilt by Nikolas R. Schiller

Last night, after watching the video in my previous posting, I decided to look around the satellite/aerial imagery of Las Vegas to gauge the level of sprawl. Upon further inspection I discovered how much of Las Vegas is composed of large tracts of suburban, low-density housing. I knew there was a lot of this type of development, but it wasn’t until I started looking closely did I see the pattern of the development.

The neighborhood of Las Vegas that I chose to use for today’s map is called West Sahara. It’s a large retirement community that allows only people aged 55 or older to be residents. I guess you could say that I’m happy that I’m not even allowed to live there for at least 27 years. But as I mused before, will there be any water left in 2036 when I qualify to live in neighborhood? I jest, I would never live there– put me in the mountains or a city, but not in a cookie cutter house surrounded by only people my age.

Anyways, I chose the location because it features one of my favorite transportation designs, the traffic circle. I might make a derivative map of this location later today…

View the Google Map of the West Sahara Lake neighborhood in Las Vegas, Nevada

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A location somewhere within the map

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Georgetown Quilt #5
|| 1/14/2009 || 11:07 pm || Comments Off on Georgetown Quilt #5 || ||

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Georgetown Quilt Number 5 by Nikolas R. Schiller

Its been awhile since I’ve made a map, so I decided to revisit Georgetown. When making this map, I tried to center the focus on the intersection of M Street & Wisconsin Ave. I was able to do this more easily because I started with a smaller piece of aerial photography than I normally work with.

View the Google Map of the Georgetown neighborhood in Washington, DC

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A location somewhere within the map

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Newark Quilt #2
|| 12/13/2008 || 10:04 pm || Comments Off on Newark Quilt #2 || ||

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Newark Quilt #2 by Nikolas R. Schiller

Using this portion of Newark Quilt, I was able to constructive this Hexagon Quilt Projection derivative map. If you look closely there is a nice hexagram in the center of the map. I’d like to make a map of Trenton, New Jersey next.

View the Google Map of downtown Newark, New Jersey

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A location somewhere within the map

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Newark Quilt
|| 12/12/2008 || 11:43 pm || Comments Off on Newark Quilt || ||

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Newark Quilt by Nikolas R. Schiller

Would you believe that this is my first map of the Garden State? It is. After hundreds of maps, I have finally gotten around to making a map of New Jersey. Originally the delay was based on the availability of color imagery due to the fact that I could only obtain false-color composite imagery of New Jersey. While it looks nice, it is not within the color parameters I’ve chosen to work with. If you look around this website you won’t see any quilt projection maps using this type of coloring. While I have modified the colors of the source aerial photography before, I have not started with false-color imagery and then made a map.

The imagery I was able to obtain and use for this Dodecagon Quilt Projection map is, ummm, to say it nicely, pretty much crap. According to the metadata, this .5 meter aerial photography was taken in March of 2006, processed in June of 2006, and released to the public on June 26th, 2007. Instead of using a digital camera, this imagery was taken with an analog film camera, printed out, scanned, and finally digitally altered for correctness. The result is a very grainy resolution when looked at up close and is comparable to the poor-quality Los Angeles imagery I worked with last year.

The imagery also suffers from the fact that it wasn’t taken completely at nadir. This means that you can see a mishmash of perspectives, where buildings literally run into each other because the angle at which the photograph was taken wasn’t completely overhead (nadir). For example, in the detail below you can actually read the lettering of the Prudential building due to the obliqueness of the original aerial photograph.

Anyways, now I only have to complete a map of somewhere in Vermont and I’ll have a made a map of a city in every state in the United States! I think its time to remove the dust from my last book proposal….

View the Google Map of downtown Newark, New Jersey

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A location somewhere within the map

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Eye 670 – A perspective of Interstate 670 in downtown Kansas City
|| 12/10/2008 || 3:04 pm || Comments Off on Eye 670 – A perspective of Interstate 670 in downtown Kansas City || ||

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Eye 670 by Nikolas R. Schiller

Using this portion of Kansas City Quilt #2, I created this derivative map of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. This map is a unique map because it features aspects of the Lenz Projection and the Quilt Projection combined to create what looks like a human eye. By combing what it looks like with the location, I-670, the name of this map becomes a play on words.

View the Google Map of downtown Kansas City, Missouri

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A location somewhere within the map

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Kansas City Quilt #2
|| 12/9/2008 || 2:42 pm || Comments Off on Kansas City Quilt #2 || ||

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Kansas City Quilt #2 by Nikolas R. Schiller

Using this portion of Kansas City Quilt, I created this derivative map of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. When making this map I tried a few different variations but settled on a Diamond Quilt Projection map.

View the Google Map of downtown Kansas City, Missouri

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A location somewhere within the map

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Kansas City Quilt
|| 12/8/2008 || 2:19 pm || Comments Off on Kansas City Quilt || ||

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Kansas City Quilt by Nikolas R. Schiller

It’s been over a month since I’ve made a map and to knock the dust off of this website I’ve decided to make a map of city that I’ve never sampled before. For over two years there was a licensing issue that prevented the imagery used in this map from being placed into the public domain. I don’t know when it was finally released, but I’m happy they did. This map features the downtown area of the Missouri side of Kansas City and when I was tessellating the source aerial photography I made sure to include something I remembered from when I was a kid. When we’d drive to Colorado from Missouri, we’d drive through downtown Kansas City and I always thought it was cool that there was a portion that created a tunnel that cars drove under. While I didn’t know it at the time, this building is the Bartle Hall Convention Center and I placed it at the exact center of this Octagon Quilt Projection map.

View the Google Map of downtown Kansas City, Missouri

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A location somewhere within the map

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[Commission] Shirlington Quilt
|| 10/15/2008 || 6:16 pm || Comments Off on [Commission] Shirlington Quilt || ||

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Shirlington Quilt

I’ve been working on this commissioned map for a few months now. It was originally going to be Paris, but we decided to it would be easier to make a map of their house. I spent some extra time transforming the nearby highway into a heart (below) to signify the love between the husband and wife. I think it looks beautiful :-) It will be placed in the client’s home, which is featured within the map.

View the Google Map of the Shirlington neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia.

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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: