PA14A-01:
Science and Photography Linked in iPad and iPhone Apps About Climate Change and Repeat Photography
Abstract:
Red Hill Studio and World View of Global Warming co-developed apps for the iPad and iPhone which graphically show climate-driven changes in repeat photographs and maps. The climate app, with 17 interactive screens that show climate changes to glaciers, coasts, rivers and world temperature, reaches a new part of the public, was featured in USA Today and is used in schoolrooms and museums. It led a list of top ten climate apps for 2012. The low price for this app encourages more users and income is being shared with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Red Hill Studio is also developing an app which is an aid for making time series and repeat photography. The Now & Then Cam app will allow scientists and citizens to take closely aligned repeat photos by overlaying the iPad/iPhone’s camera image on top of an archival photo. This guides the photographer back towards the original location of the archival shot – leading to a more carefully aligned repeat photograph.The developers hope this app will contribute to both scientific and artistic creation of time-series photographs, an important and persuasive visualization of change.
The Painting with Time and Now & Then Cam apps build upon a traveling museum exhibition, Playing with Time, and an international documentary special, Exploring Time, that were developed by Red Hill Studios under grants from the National Science Foundation. The app programmers, Charlie Brown and J.A. Nelson, use Objective C to create fluid, responsive interfaces with no distracting latencies or delays. World View of Global Warming is an independent photojournalistic documentation of global warming and rapid climate change begun in 1999. Repeat and time-series photography is an integral part it its climate communication.
