Tagging the tour

Here it is, the little tour I did in Turnhout, geotagged in the Sony DCH-HX5V.

iSweep and geotagging

Digital apparel continues to develop apace. The pixel war continues with, for instance, compact cameras now moving significantly beyond 10 mp with new sensor technologies. And then there is a steady stream of more or less gimmicky add-ons. I am not keeping track of all these developments. However in the framework of my Matterhorn-project I have been interested by the possibility to geotag pictures, i.e. to add GPS-derived co-ordinates to images. Now this features is also becoming available in cheaper compact cameras. I capitulated for the 10.2 Mp Sony Cybershot DSC-HX5V when I noticed that it also offers the iSweep intelligent panorama function. It's crazy: you just move your arm with the camera in an 180° arc and the thing combines 100 exposures in a single 7152 x 1080 image (with Horizon-like distortion). As is obvious from on the pictures above, the stitching is not always perfect. It does take a little practice. But 90% of the panos without moving objects are perfect. Apparently the images are captured from the video feed, so it is not suitable for real, publication quality stuff. But for purely documentary purposes it's excellent. From October onwards I will start to work on an urban design studio in the framework of my Master of Human Settlements studies. The studio centers on Turnhout. One of the things I would like to do to jumpstart the studio work is to collect a database of pictures of the city and its surroundings. I think these very wide angle panoramas work very well to remind planners of the surroundings. This in combination with the geotagging functionality is awesome. Each image can be inserted into Google Maps or Google Earth or any other GIS mapping software. Anyway, that's the idea. Yesterday I went to Turnhout, made a short walk north of the city along the canal and captured around 50 panorama images. All of those have geodata as part of the exif-file. However, I have not been able to insert the pics in Google Maps yet (tried a few routes, via iPhoto on my Mac, Flickr and Panoramio, but no success so far). However, I am quite sure it can be done. This will also be very useful to document the Matterhorn project.

Peregrinations

The image that was last posted on the blog - a white flag fluttering in an energetic Icelandic breeze - followed by a four month silence may have suggested that I moved on to other horizons. Well, not quite. But admittedly it has been very quiet. My creative energy was to a large extent focused on the studies I have started on urbanism. Easter was spent on an urban design studio in Venice, followed by two intense months of writing papers and preparing for exams. That brought us to the beginning of July. Wrapping up project work for the holidays from which we have returned just two weeks ago. There you have four months.

But it's certainly true that my drive to go out and take pictures has waned over the last couple of months. I've grown used to the cyclical rise and fall of creative energy. Or rather: to the modulations between different carriers of energy, be it words, music, images or ideas. And so recently I have been more into reading, writing and also exploring new musical repertoire. As a result, images receded a little in the background.

The holidays were a good opportunity to reconnect with my photographic endeavours. I had planned a week at the foot of the Matterhorn, to proceed with my 'portrait' project. And so I packed up my 4x5" camera and headed for Zermatt and Cervinia, rediscovering the joy of the slow peregrinations around this fabulous mountain. Despite some persistent cloud formations around the Cervino, I was able to take some good pictures. This time I focused on the well known and often photographed east and south sides of the mountain. That resulted in some good images. Very classic, but with a poise and quiet that suits me very well. I am starting to build up a significant portfolio now of Matterhorn pictures, but the final shape of the project is still unclear. However, I managed to secure the support of a number of key people in the Cervinia community, which will make it more easy, I hope, to find a place for the project when the commemoration is due, in 2015.

After the Matterhorn I caught up with the family for a week of walking in a quiet corner of the French Alps. I exchanged the 4x5" for the XPan loaded with Reala, to take some snaps along the way. After this relaxing week we headed to the Southwest of France for a week of rest and reading.

The other project that continues to loom large on my photographic horizon is the Hölderlin project. My studies in landscape urbanism and landscape architecture have led me onwards in the conceptualization of this project:an amalgamation of philosophical reflection, textual analysis, bodily movement, travelling, craftsmanship, photography, and engineering and design of physical infrastructure and landscape. The plan is now to use the thesis on landscape urbanism that I will write the coming academic year to document these ideas and to do a first survey of their interconnection. That work could be the basis for a much more encompassing research (including an 800km long walk) that could eventually result in a PhD. It is a fascinating project, linking our current predicament (environmental pressure, sprawling cities, large inequities, robber baron capitalism) to the basic datum of the landscape and our relationship to it, with an early Romantic German poet as mediator.

One implication of my studies is that I am starting to look in a different way at the world around us. Previously, quite a bit of my photographic work was centered on the urban environment. But I find it difficult now to find an appropriate stance that does justice at once to my increased conceptual knowledge about cities and the more intuitive response I have towards the city (which, in the light of this new knowledge, I tend to see as naive). It will take time to sort this out.