Photo elevation

March 11, 2009 9:22 AM

Help me find some images of street elevations composed with photography. I saw some work done by someone of entire city streets (at least several blocks worth) of buildings, where he'd have to take images every few feet apart down the street so that when it was stitched together the perspective didn't become distorted, but I don't remember where it was or what his name is. There may also be lots of people who've done the same thing if I can only find them.
posted by lou to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

You may be thinking of Ed Ruscha's Every Building on Sunset Strip. There have been many other photographers that have done similar projects, for example: Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York, which I happened to see the other day at the bookstore. Not exactly Ed Ruscha, but great nonetheless.
posted by gyusan at 10:00 AM on March 11, 2009

Here's another example by Canadian photographer/architect Michael Awad.
posted by betafilter at 10:37 AM on March 11, 2009

You might also want to check out Photosynth, which is a Microsoft project for patching together photos to regain 3d info. From the blurb:

Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point each photo was taken from. With this information, we recreate the space and use it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos.

Also of interest may be Gigapan which is the website for a gadget that automates the taking and stitching of these mosaics. The site hosts a number of examples, including urban scenes.
posted by Jakey at 12:17 PM on March 11, 2009

Have you tried Google Earth?
posted by Palmerpoodles at 8:08 PM on March 11, 2009