Street View

The Sunday Times Magazine of 11 December 2011 carried a fascinating article by Bryan Appleyard titled “Google Street View as Art” which covered the use of Google’s Street View images by artists and photographers.

One of the photographers, Doug Rickard, compiled a collection of images for an exhibition titled ‘A New American Picture’ held in 2011 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

From the ST article “Doug Rickard… is interested in the American content and its haunting, visceral power. I was interested in photographing America in the same context, with the same poetry and power, that has been done in the past. It’s sad but true that if you want to find the poorest area in any American city, look for the name Martin Luther King. The title of MLK boulevard, street or square is almost a guarantee that you are in the most deprived, crime-ridden part of town.”

After finding the view he is after Doug photographs the screen with a digital camera and then edits the photos (removing watermarks and cropping to a panoramic format).

A New American Picture can be viewed here http://www.americansuburb.com/

Another artist making creative use of Street View is Jon Rafman who has a vast collection of images on the website 9-eyes.com (named after the nine cameras attached to the pole on the roof of the Google cars).

From a 2009 post by Jon Rafman; “One year ago, I started collecting screen captures of Google Street Views from a range of Street View blogs and through my own hunting. This essay illustrates how my Street View collections reflect the excitement of exploring this new, virtual world.”

A good place to start to see Jon Rafman’s work http://googlestreetviews.com/

Bryan Appleyard “Google Street View as Art” Sunday Times, 11 December 2011 – http://www.bryanappleyard.com/google-street-view-as-art/

It’s freezing outside tonight. The woodburner is barely upping the ambient temperature of the room and the dog is practically melded to it. So when you see a shot like this by Clare Plueckhahn, you kind of wish yourself away.

Don’t get me wrong: I love where I live, but sometimes a tropical A-frame and a lava-like sunset will make me a little…. restless.

Tim McKenna

If you’re a surfer, a real surfer, then the chance is very strong that at some point in your life you’ve sat glumly staring at flat surf, wishing those small inshore ripples, breaking so beautifully clean and hollow, were actually 600% bigger. Either that, or you wished you were a mouse.

A mouse with a quiver of boards, made by your trusted mouse shaper. Who you paid in cheese.

Using tilt shift photography, Renowned Australian surf photographer Tim McKenna has made those dreams seem almost true, with this odd perspective on Teahupo’o, a surf break that is so often visually terrifying.

See more of Tim’s work here.

Jeff Divine’s  Slice of the 70′s

Jeff Divine is a surf photographer of huge reputation. Having taken photos since the 1960s in California his images are iconic in the pages of magazines they have appeared in. I was first introduced to his bold, colourful visions when I bought an anniversary issue of Surfer magazine that had photos from the 1960′s to the 2000′s – and he had entries in all the decades. But it’s Jeff’s 1970′s photos that have struck a cord with me, they seem to perfectly capture that whole drop-out California generation when boards were fat and trousers even fatter.

I had the pleasure of meeting Jeff in person at an exhibition in Brighton a few years ago (see below) to help publicise his book Surfing Photographs From The Seventies Taken By Jeff Divine. He was a great storyteller and still passionate about shooting surf photos some 50 years on.

kernowfornia x slimmer jimmer

One roll of film, two photographers:

Joni Sternbach | Countdown to Solstice

Time-travelling surfers from Joni Sternbach:

For a friend, I’m sat in front of a fire that’s barely pushing enough heat to keep my knee-caps warm, as I try and write him a little poem-piece on sunny LA. It’s hard to take myself there mentally when the British winter is zealously permeating every cold corner inside my roomy house, exposed on a high hill top near the North Cornish coast.

So I’ve had to delve into the library of shots I took whilst I was out there, for some focus. I thought I might post a few up too.

Chances are I’ll find an excuse now and then to show you some more (by now, regular visitors will no doubt be aware of my fetish for that distant city).

I make no apologies…

Ryan Tatar | The Outer Sunset

The Outer Sunset is a forthcoming project from photographer Ryan Tatar exploring surf culture in the Outer Sunset district of San Francisco. Keep an eye on Ryan’s website for updates.

Exhibits #1 & #2 in the case for insuring eyeballs.

magnetophotography.com

Día de Los Muertos

Photograph by Raoul Ortega. Learn more about Día de Los Muertos here.