These last few weeks here in denton have been a bit crazy. We’ve had everything from snow and ice to 90 degree weather and rain in-between. Because of the weather closing school and spring break happening just after that, its been an uphill battle to get back into school.

So this is where the project stands. We have been trying to get data points input into the rephoto app so we can start collecting data. There has been some technical errors along the way so that has been a little difficult. Im still waiting to hear back from a professor on the LiDar data for UNT so thats in the works. Ive spent the most of my time thinking about how photographs are being used for this project and what all else can be done to improve the overall process of collecting data for trees. These are a couple thoughts:

Thoughts on Photography:

My first passion is photography. Making beautiful images and sharing them with the world. Thats what I love doing. I am studying, at this point, both photography and geography. My first two years here at the university were all spent focusing on art. Learning design principals and the technical aspects of how to create an image. With this background it has been a struggle to translate these skills into this workable ideas for this project. I want to focus on making beautiful images, but the purpose of these images is almost at the opposite end of the spectrum from that.

In the RePhoto app it asks the user to take a “good image”. That has been something that has bothered me from the beginning but I haven’t found another way to either state that, or change the statement all together. In fine arts photography we consider a “good image” as an image that is well exposed. Well exposed means it has a full range of values, so you can see things in the highlights and shadows. With iPhone and mobile phone cameras the variability of image quality is immeasurable. This is a variable that will need to be considered extensively in order to determine the effectiveness of the app.