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Thread: What kind of map?

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  1. #1

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    I doubt anyone's going to be able to decipher much about it from that image. It appears to depict a lake, and it has some shaded relief. The regular grid seems to indicate that it's a land use tool of some kind, but there's no way of knowing what the blue squares mean without being able to read the legend.

    Some kind of context might help—where did the image come from? What was its purpose? That's an old car there, but the image is clearly newer than the car, based on its level of saturation and lack of grain. The unified colors and lighting indicate a professional image, which combined with the dutch angle and the push-pin marks suggest that it was perhaps part of an ad.

    The colors also push me into thinking a desert setting, and the low-angle light indicates "magic hour": the time just before sunset or just after sunrise, a popular time for taking photographs. The light could have been created in a studio, though; there isn't enough information in the reflections to say one way or the other. In any case, given the way the map is displayed, it's certain that it is meant to communicate the the location of the car is the location depicted on the map. The rocks holding down the edge tell us that we're supposed to think it is windy, but if it really were, those little pebbles would do nothing to actually hold the map down.

    There is some indication of tabs at the corners of the image, but since they're cropped, we can't tell what this picture is affixed to: a wall, a photo album, something else? The paper of the map is crumpled, but not yellowed, nor is there the sort of dirt that always seems to accumulate in maps stored in my car, so I suspect that it's actually a new map that was deliberately wrinkled to make it appear well-used. The car appears pristine—no sun damage, so it is likely stored in a garage, and it's clean, so it hasn't been driving on that dirt evident in the background. The reflection in the lower center area of the cropped frame is sharper than the highlights closer to the light source. We should be seeing a much stronger glint from the paint and chrome over there, so the car was probably treated with a dulling spray to prevent the highlights from overexposing. Also, whoever staged this shot was careful to make the pebbles weighting the map look casual, but the little pile of dirt only touches paper—it is well clear of the car's paint.

    That's pretty well everything I can glean from the image.
    Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
    http://www.bryanray.name

  2. #2

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    The photo of the 1964 Pontiac Lemans or GTO with the map on the hood is part of the clue in a trivia contest. I thought that maybe the members of this forum would be able to shed some light on the map itself. The rest of the clue reads, "There's Death Valley, Grand Canyon, Overland Trail, Yosemite Falls, even Route 66.
    Sure, they are all found on a map, but it's possible to see them all in a single state.
    Shed some light for us -- which state?" It seems easy but the questions/clues are often very tricky.

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