Why YOUR Photography Matters

I was using Google Street View to find an intersecting street name for a photo I had taken.

The sign in the image told me one street name and since it was only 4 blocks long I figured it should be easy to determine which one of the 5 intersections was the corner for my image.

I tried 3 times to find the corner but with no luck. I just didn’t see my image. It wasn’t until I tried to remember where the streets were steep and placed the google 'bonhomme' on that intersection and looked really hard to find the same buildings, it finally become apparent. It was always there but I didn't see it because of the compression in distance in my image.

F9.0 iso 200 s 1/200 @135mm (202mm at 25mm equ)

The next 2 'Google Maps images' show first at the intersection and the second image taken further up 'Solano y Davalos' where approximately I was standing when I took my photo above.

from Google Street View

These google images don’t show the true steepness of the streets that surround the central square 'el Jardin' as many call it. Only the image in the bottom right, when zoomed in, begins to show similarities.

from Google Street View

Using a zoom lens could bring the steepness of the street towards the end closer and into view. When standing where the street starts to become steeper, the same perception was harder to capture since at that point there were no references to show level as in the zoomed image.

This is why we each need to take our own photographs because only the photographer can tell the story that they see. Mechanical taken images just don't quite cut it.

Niels Henriksen