The typical order of business for most people when Google Street View came to Australia seemed to be:
But given the extraordinarily comprehensive coverage, another possibility came to mind. Can Street View replace the need to take one’s camera to show off a place you’ve visited?
Well, the short answer appears to be “no”. Below you can have a look at my attempts at some picture-postcard shots of some of Australia’s more famous locations; frankly, Uncle Arthur probably did a better job with his Instamatic. Aside from the technical limitations of the resolution and color saturation of the Street View cameras, even average photographers tend to be very selective in how they frame and compose their shots; for one thing, they don’t tend to shoot scenic views from the road! It was rather a lesson in how selective our visual memory can be, actually.
Anybody else find any vistas attractively captured by Street View’s roving band of Priuses?
Ha great post Robert – I am gonna go find some postcard views myself!
the highway near uluru doesnt seem to be up…
“It was rather a lesson in how selective our visual memory can be, actually.”
Hmmm.. this is kinda on-topic I guess…
I was thinking much the same thing the other day WRT sound and live music. And not just in memory, but in real-time too. We experience and remember as mind-blowing perfection, performances which if recorded from our listening position would be severely compromised even with the best equipment.
Try it some time – even a good split from the desk or true fully-multichannel recording will reveal muddy, messy sound and usually performances that probably wouldn’t have been the “user” take in the studio. If not outright fuckups you just don’t notice if you’re there. Or maybe, don’t care about until you’re not there.
But that’s the good ones. Your average live gig is decidedly average sounding, even when I’m mixing!
Visual memory and real-time experience seems to be the same, only (as ever) much easier to define and describe due to the inherent inferiority of light to sound as an emotional stimulant. But there are some serious filters in our sensory perception and memory that are just wonderful at making things better when we want them to be better. How cool is that?
Indeed. There’s nothing like a recording to show the rose-coloured glasses, with matching earmuffs, that you typically witness a live performance through.
No wonder everybody wanted to lip-sync on Countdown…
Maybe not the best for great vista shots, but I’ve had relatives visiting from interstate recently and it was very useful for showing them how to get to places they’d never been before. Not only can you show them the route on the map, but what it will look like along the way (eg at points where they need to turn).
Chris: undoubtedly. And, clearly, replicating the work of scenic photographers wasn’t Google’s goal here.
Nope.
As a frequent user of taxis in more than one city and country while often pissed out of my mind at sparrowfart,I wanna see this app as a HUD for taxi drivers.
“No I can’t remember the hotel’s name and I’ve lost their card but I know what the street looks like.”
“Que?”