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Tag : photo project

20 Nov 2017
ALLENTOWN MUSEUM PHOTO EXHIBIT

STUDY YOUR COMPETITION

“Steve” and I are part of a large photography exhibit that opened this weekend at the Allentown Art Museum.  I had photographed Steve as part of a project on artists and am always eager to show him off.

STEVE SEARS BLACKSNMITH BY BROKAW PHOTOGRAPHY

The exhibition hall was packed with photographers who are all displaying great images.  It is a little daunting to see how good they all are and also encouraging to see the bar for photography rising higher and higher.  Mediocre images just don’t cut it.

When high quality becomes the norm, the only place to go is up.

It would be easy to be jealous other other people’s talent but that’s pretty much a waste of attention.  It is much more fun to study what they do and how they do.  Not to imitate or compare but to understand.

Business (i.e., life) is always a learning process. Gotta love it.…

31 Oct 2017
FRENCHTOWN BUSINESSES ON GOOGLE EARTH

LEVERAGING GOOGLE EARTH

Marketing is all about engaging the viewer.  The vast majority of what we encounter on line is simply viewed, read or heard. We read posts, look at photos, watch videos and listen to recordings.

But there are always applications emerging that can engage us by allowing us to interact with what we see.  We do more than just look or listen, we take action by zooming and panning and clicking.  This engages our motor functions and stimulates our brains.

One of my favorite applications is Google Earth which lets me fly around the globe, zoom in on areas and check out photos.  Naturally, I want to put my own content out there so I launched a project called Frenchtown 150 to commemorate Frenchtown NJ’s 150th anniversary.

My vision was to generate 150 photos of 150 locations in the borough and put them on Google Earth where viewers could pan and zoom around to explore both visually and spatially.  I recruited a small group of about 20 other talented photographers from my Meetup Group (Frenchtown Photography Meetup ) and assigned them locations to shoot and instructed them on how to post-process and georeference their images. Below is a GIS generated map of the locations for the photographers.

Upon receive the image files I utilized a tool written by programmer, Timothy Whitehead, who works for Red Wing Aerobatx and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.  Timothy’s tool allowed me to batch create a KML file with the georeferenced images with I then modified to enable hyperlinking to the image files on my website.  Upon launching the KML file, the photo locations and image files become visible on Google Earth.

Each camera icon below represents a photo which can be viewed upon zooming in or by clicking on the menu of locations to the left of the aerial photo.…

13 Oct 2017
FRENCHTOWN 150

WE’RE ALL SPATIAL

Everybody is somewhere. (Whether we know where we are is another question.)  For many businesses, it is all about location, location, location.  Where you are matters.

When it comes to commercial photography, the images produce often are created to show the feel and character of a business’s location.  This also is true for business communities, like Frenchtown, NJ, that rely on visitors.

Digital photography allows us to tag our files with latitude/longitude coordinates and on-line tools, such as Google Earth can read these coordinates and position the images in their exact location on a map.

So as an experiment (and to push the spatial envelope) I launched my latest project called Frenchtown 150.  I am coordinating a group of photographers to create a comprehensive visual and on-line spatial representation of Frenchtown to celebrate its 150th year anniversary and show just what it is like, now, in October 2017.

The first step was to generate a properly scaled map of all the proposed photo locations using GIS software (ArcView) as shown above.  150 locations were plotted ranging from forest trails to downtown businesses.

Step two will be to corral the photographers, instruct them on the project parameters, and then have them shoot the photos and tag them with coordinates.

The final step will be to compiled all the geotagged images on Google Earth which will enable users to fly in and view the photos on a three dimensional map of the Earth.  The photo below is an actual screen shot of Google Earth showing one of the embedded business photos floating above it’s actual location.

CITGO ON GOOGLE EARTH

I can see this being applicable for many businesses, whether a single location or multi locations.  We’ve got the tools out there.  Let’s use them.

www.BrokawPhotography.com