The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

Washington Monument Quilt #2
|| 10/22/2009 || 5:22 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

: rendered at 9,000 X 6,000 :
Washington Monument Quilt #2 by Nikolas Schiller

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.

: detail :

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Federal Triangle Refraction
|| 3/6/2008 || 12:16 pm || Comments Off on Federal Triangle Refraction || ||

: rendered at 12,000 X 8,000 :
$Federal Triangle Refraction by Nikolas Schiller$

Lately I’ve been revisiting some of the elements from the Lenz Projection— specifically in the Charlotte Spheres, Pentagon Spheres, Grand Design Lenz Quilt, and Rochester Quilt #2. Today I decided to experiment a little more with aerial refraction. Using the 3rd derivative tessellation, originally used in Federal Triangle Quilt #4, I this created a visually engaging map. I like how the bars look very similar to my polar coordinate experiments. Specifically, I like the way that they imagery is curved and refracted. What I don’t like, however, is the way the shadows present themselves within the refraction. Since like bars are angled toward the viewer, they create a darker hue due to their internal shadows. The way around this is to decrease the angle of the bars, but in response to this, the imagery bends less. I will probably revisit this type of map in the future.

View the Google Map of Federal Triangle in downtown Washington, DC.

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Los Angeles Quilt
|| 1/30/2006 || 8:29 am || Comments Off on Los Angeles Quilt || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Los Angeles Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

I’ve had this imagery for a long time but never did anything with it because I felt that the USGS made a poor decision in buying this imagery for the contracting company. Essentially, aerial photography taken in the afternoon (my guess is around 4pm) has large of shadows that obstruct the view of the ground and in my opinion, worthless. Nonetheless, I finally made something of downtown L.A. and as I look at it again, I think the shadows add architectural stitches to the quilt. Geographic Chiaroscuro.

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Houston Quilt
|| 12/20/2005 || 10:20 pm || Comments Off on Houston Quilt || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Houston Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

Like Providence, I have yet to visit downtown Houston, however I can still manipulate the city to some degree. Today’s degree is to the tune of about 60 :-) 360 divided by 60 equals 6 (which equals 3 lines of symmetry which I call “seams” of the quilt) and judging by my last quilts, I’ve found this number to be my favorite degree of manipulation.

So far I’ve made about 39 different quilts (multi-planar maps), and I think it is about time to begin the subdivision of the quilt project into the number seams each quilt has. This means I have to create a sub-category for each number of seams, and then go back through every blog entry and assign each quilt to it’s respective category. This will allow a casual visitor to this site the ability to look at all of the quilts at once or by each respective number of seams.

Starting at 2 seams, like the Ivan Memory (the first quilt) and Beverly Hills Quilt #3, then to 3 seams, like today’s quilt, and then quilts that have greater than 4 seams. This categorization of the quilt project will be helpful in the long run because it will show the ways the geographic tessellations react when reflected multiple times and more importantly it will help organize what has been my favorite projection of 2005.

As for Houston Quilt, the imagery is from 2002 from the USGS (of course!) and I modified the imagery in such a way that the center of the tessellation is Highway 45 and the high-rise buildings of downtown Houston surround it.

The drawback of this imagery, similar to my Denver imagery, is that the aerial photograph was taken in the afternoon and due to the angle of illumination, the shadows obscure much of the ground. Yet this can also be a nice aspect too because the shadows also reflect and make the rendering special in their own way.

I’d rather have the photograph taken from nadir (straight above) at noon on cloudless, sunny day (this eliminates shadows and distortion at the center of the scene). But of course that would be too easy right? :-)

The other drawback is that the imagery itself is somewhat devoid of colors. Granted the sensors did pick up colors, but they are not very vibrant. When looking at the map above it almost appears to be black & white, but when you look at the details you can see some color.

Maybe I should go in and modify the imagery again and add color? In the past, the closest I’ve gotten to doing that was embedding my name into the imagery, and that wasn’t that special. The Boston imagery is still some of my favorite imagery because of the color variations and the good news it that I also downloaded imagery of downtown Houston from 2004 which has an interesting patch of different colored imagery in. When tessellated, this imagery will add that colorful dimension this map currently lacks. First I have to prepare the imagery and I think I might just make another map using the Houston imagery. I was thinking of maybe a 2 seamed map or should it be 4? I’ll find out soon!

==Update==
I ultimately used the geometric shape instead of the lines of symmetry for my naming convention.

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Buena Park Mandala
|| 8/15/2005 || 7:22 am || Comments Off on Buena Park Mandala || ||

: rendered at 12,000 X 12,000 :
Buena Park Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

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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Buena Park Quilt 2
|| 7/30/2005 || 1:39 pm || Comments Off on Buena Park Quilt 2 || ||

: rendered at 9,000 X 6,000 :
Buena Park Quilt no. 2 by Nikolas Schiller

Over projected, but looks nice. more later….

…later has arrived.

I think its interesting that this rendering is probably one of the smallest in pixel size. I think it will look great printed out. Flora Buena…

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Buena Park Quilt
|| 7/28/2005 || 8:00 pm || Comments Off on Buena Park Quilt || ||

: rendered at 12,000 X 8,000 :
Buena Park Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

This rendering is an example of found imagery. An old friend gave me her address in Buena Park, California and on a whim I downloaded the aerial photography of her neighborhood. A few weeks later I decided to open up the TIFF file and prepare it for a rendering. And then a few days later I finally used the imagery in a rendering. Is it found or just delayed? Regardless, it looks cool to me :-)

I truly love the way suburban houses resemble watersheds, albeit square instead of fluid. I would say this rendering and the Mall Quilt are currently my favorite Quilt renderings.

This entry has a better zoom of the center, even though it only has two lines of symmetry.

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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: