Seeing our beloved earth from outer space must be a breathtaking experience. And since we are not astronauts, we can only imagine it. But yes, astronauts have witnessed the beauty of earth from above and describe it as the ‘blue marble’.
So building on the idea of seeing earth and everything from the space, Banjamin Grant, a consultant in New York, US, came up with an idea of ‘Overview Effect’ and brought out a book as well as a website, www.dailyoverview.com. Both, comprise collections of images of our world and everything in it like structures, fields, plains, houses, forests, oceans, etc., from an angle we have never seen before.
‘Overview Effect’ is when astronauts see earth in universe from a great distance, they suddenly have a mental clarity — a new understanding of what it means to be alive and how everything is connected. Grant is not an astronaut, but it all happened so suddenly when he was searching for a satellite imagery of earth. He found dozens of earth images from various angles and that’s where he got an idea of collecting the overview pictures of earth and various places from an astronaut’s angle.
According to Grant, he works with images taken by satellites orbiting Earth from hundreds of miles away. Some of the images on the site are composites of as many as 25 photos, which he stitches together and enhances in Photoshop. Dailyoverview doesn’t require registration, you can explore the pictures and read a brief description of what the picture is about. However, if you want to use the picture, you must write to the site and seek permission.
To have the overview of the earth, visit
Published in Dawn, Young World, September 28th, 2019
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