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Feb. 8, 2006
Photographic perspective is something that most of us change by moving closer or further from a subject, or by changing our lens to a different focal length. But perspective can also change dramatically by pointing the camera up or down. One example: the Grand Canyon. Most of the shots I had seen before visiting the Canyon were taken from along the rim looking out across the great valley. They gave me some idea of how big the Grand Canyon was at that point along the river. But it took a view of the Canyon from 30,000 feet above (out the window of a commercial airliner) before I was able to appreciate its real magnitude. Even from that height, the Canyon stretched from horizon-to-horizon, unlike anything I had seen on this earth smaller than a mountain range. I wondered what the original Indians who discovered the canyon would have thought if they could see it from my vantage point.
That's not the first time I've had a similar thought. In fact, I've been given more than my share of unusual aerial perspectives in my life, starting with the first time I took a trip in a small Piper Cub as a teenager. (I grew up 1/2 mile down the road from a small-town airport, saved up $20 cutting lawns, and paid a pilot for a trip.) As I flew over the town at a mere 2,000 feet (the highest I had ever been above the ground), I was spellbound. What once seemed far away from a ground perspective now seemed closer than ever, and roads that I thought were relatively straight (from a bike riding perspective) took on a snake-like appearance. But the biggest surprise was being able to see the skyline of New York City and even pick out the Empire State Building-from over 50 miles away. I didn't even own a camera at the time, but I can still picture that image in my mind.
However, I did have a camera with me on the day I flew over the rainbow! (No, I didn't spot Dorothy and Toto.) It happened in mid-summer over Mobile, Alabama as I took my first ride in a U.S. Coast Guard HH-52 helicopter. As we flew through a mid-day rain shower, the sun burst its way through the clouds above us, and a giant, full circle rainbow appeared between us and the ground. Smack dab in the middle of that circular rainbow was the shadow of the helicopter. Unfortunately, I was only able to capture a picture that showed one side of the rainbow and our shadow using my "sophisticated" Minolta 110 camera.
Ok, before I get to the point of this column, I also have to mention the view I saw from the cockpit of a jetliner as it crossed the entire Pacific Ocean under the light of a full moon. Or the different perspective I got of strip mines in Illinois as I passed over them in a hot air balloon. (There's no way to see the damage from the main road because the edge of most mines are lined with tree barriers.) But if you want to get a bird's eye view of these earth scars for yourself, get a first hand view of the Grand Canyon from above, or see what your home and town look like from above, try visiting http://local.live.com. This site is still in Beta form, but it's part of the Windows Live initiative from Microsoft. (Unfortunately, it doesn't work yet with the Safari browser on Mac computers.)
When you get to the site and plug in an address or location, the default view takes you to a road map or street map, similar to those found in Microsoft's Streets and Trips software. Among other things, you can use this view to generate directions, or to find all the pizza places in a certain town. But the site really comes alive if the upper left side of the map page shows an "aerial" or "Bird's Eye View" icon for the address you've entered. The aerial view shows a high-flying satellite image that you can zoom in on. Some of these are a few years old, and just detailed enough to show objects the size of cars and pools. The Bird's Eye Views are extraordinary, and available for most cities in the U.S. These have much higher detail-the result of high resolution photos taken by low flying planes (part of a US Government mapping project). In fact, I found a shot of the Pop Photo building in NY that almost had enough detail to show me waving from the window. However, they don't have any shots showing rainbows from above, or moonlit clouds over Tahiti. Those you have to get the old fashioned way.
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