Interesting photos from Google Street View | Hacker News Reader

Interesting photos from Google Street View

9-eyes.com

189 pointsryannielsen49 comments

Wayne & Garth?

http://9-eyes.com/photo/1280/604823569/1/tumblr_l2j7f1fGXv1q...

What's up with the glitches?

http://9-eyes.com/photo/1280/602808976/1/tumblr_l2hy4noyIh1q... http://9-eyes.com/photo/1280/2514627600/1/tumblr_le7c01dQBv1... http://9-eyes.com/photo/1280/604710840/1/tumblr_l2j5aqOlYc1q... http://9-eyes.com/photo/1280/602895911/1/tumblr_l2hzv1Iy6O1q... http://9-eyes.com/photo/1280/604809388/1/tumblr_l2j75fjOiJ1q... http://9-eyes.com/photo/1280/604756995/1/tumblr_l2j65tODrJ1q...

Those are not glitches in street view. They're glitches in reality.

The last image looks like some distance mapping data (possibly from a laser sensor or stereo vision camera) that got mixed up with the actual image data.

I'm a big fan of the ones when it goes wrong.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/12/giant_pliers/

How do people think those pliers found their way into that picture? I like to think they were accidentally left on the roof of the car but that doesn't really make sense.

Check out the OP, its got an interactive version:

http://www.streetviewfun.com/2010/gods-pliers/

Possibly the best thing I've seen today. Thanks!

Just a tiny reminder that beauty, ugliness, comedy, and tragedy are ordinary, everyday occurrences in the world.

to me it seemed that ugliness and tragedy prevail

It is easy to forget the order of magnitude of all the pictures not shown.

Dammit, I allowed myself to work through the list as it seemed to only take a minute.

It took me a little longer to notice the list just kept on growing as I progressed.

It's fully-loaded for me, and Chromium says there are 170 <img> tags.

I wish the pictures linked to google maps.

I think many of them are no longer on google maps, particularly in areas where they retake the photos quite often.

Hmm I wonder if Google archives the old images?!

It would shock and sadden me if they didn't given they will produce quite a fantastic scholarly record in 50->100 years time. And given the growth in storage tech the cost of storing the old data sets will only get cheaper.

Yes. That would be awesome indeed.

Some photos are unique due to their location though, so it'd be cool if we could see where exactly they were taken.

Yes, it would be cool to link through to the location even if the image is not there...

this could offend the depicted neighbourhoods or people. or nations...

Maybe, but it's a direct snapshot of reality; there's not even any special framing, just selection bias.

Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1904957

It misses the one with me and my neighbour :) http://i.imgur.com/vRdaU.png

Which one are you? The guy on the ladder looks like he's about to Darwin himself.

I'm standing outside in socks, with a super-soaker in hand :) it was in August.

The man behind the montage has written an interesting essay about it, providing background information on the project. The images seem to be real.

http://www.artfagcity.com/2009/08/12/img-mgmt-the-nine-eyes-...

I still think the most interesting / scary Street view was when the Street view van was followed by kidnapper/rapist (now also a murder suspect) Phillip Garrido.

http://boingboing.net/2009/08/31/did-google-street-vi.html

This is like a photographic implementation of a thousand rooms with a thousand monkeys and a thousand typewriters. Some real masterpieces.

My co-worker calls this "even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while."

well, Google Street Car won one of last years' World Press Photo Awards :)

Infinite Monkey Theorem - QED!

It seems to me good photography is less about technical skill and more about curation skill.

I have a couple of pro photography friends who lament the advent of consumer digital photography. The combination of photoshop and free shots means less people are making the effort to learn the art and science behind good photos.

I have to disagree. By my observation a lot more people are more interested in photography than there have been, due to high quality digital photography equipment at reasonable costs. And while some of them are very much "spam the shutter and see what pans out" talentless hacks, quite a few of them take the time to hone and expand their skills (behind the lens and in the "darkroom"). On the whole I think this leads to the creation of a greater number of talented and skilled photographers, though of course it also balloons the numbers of untalented photographers as well.

I'm with you. I loved and was fascinated by photography from a young age, but it was intimidatingly slow and expensive to experiment on film. Going digital let me do what I'd wanted to for years, the hobby ballooned and my skills went through the roof.

Photography involves capturing a moment or period of time, visually.

Technical skill can affect the way that moment is represented - but there'll always be an element of serendipity involved in taking a good shot.

Even so, this doesn't detract from the fact that someone who has invested time in the art of photography is going to be able to take more interesting and more notable photographs. I.e. The ratio of interesting:non-interesting shots, will be larger.

I think I see the TARDIS materializing in one of those, lol.

What's with the photos of the animal parks, can't be the Google car that's taking all those?

The wild pony ones are the most weird to me, just ponies wandering around eh?

In the New Forest (down in the south west of the UK) there are ponies, horses, sheep and more wandering freely. They are used to cars (I guess they think that they are just other animals that use the road,) and so they will not move.

Several times we have had to stop, jump out of the car and physically push ponies off the road. Fun times.

It has been Common Land, with citizens rights of usage enshrined in law, since 1698. It is sadly one of the only remaining pieces of such land we have left.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/New_forest#Co...

At first I thought these were original photos taken to look like something from the Street View cars. The people looked strangely staged. I was a little surprised to find out they were authentic.

The staged aesthetic of the photos is really something interesting and unique, almost voyeuristic in some sense.

This comment ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2271247 ) linked to a great writeup that really captured the feelings I had looking at many of them.

This is an interesting one I found:

http://www.ultra-premium.com/b/random/street-view-car.html

Unfortunately they have taken it down now, so although the link works, it leads to a location nearby, instead of the screenshot I have.

So, what do we reckon? Yeti? lol http://9-eyes.com/photo/1280/2634959651/1/tumblr_lenaaq6CJv1...

http://9-eyes.com/photo/1280/604739779/1/tumblr_l2j5udUdfM1q... looks like a shot of Vertigo.

Hmmm... most of the identifiably British photos seem to involve kids giving the Google car the middle finger. What does that say about us?

It says that you have a significant enough population of so called "chavs". And it's not just Britain. The kids in America were more or less the same. Lots of built-up anger in both cases.

Looking at many of these pictures is a reminder that poverty is akin to a disease.

That stereotype is inadequate. Maybe we ought to ask why Google is getting the finger?

From the photo where the kids are hiding their face, I'd guess there's a better chance that they think it's the police or some other government department photographing them than it being an anti-Google sentiment.

I suppose though it may depend on how the car/vehicle itself is branded.

you see a google car approaching and start to think quickly, what to do? how to express yourself? and i think even a total nerdy 'high achiever' may come up with just showing his ass! :)))

There is a total of 3 finger photos.

apparently, hoes like umbrellas.

seriously speaking, this collection is better than what most galleries have to offer.

I like how even the elephant has a blurred face (is it called face?)

whoever chose the pics has a fascination with prostitutes

And segways.

But at least in the ones I saw, never together.

At Sampsonia way in Pittsburgh, they staged a bunch of interesting scenes - fun stuff! http://www.streetwithaview.com/

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