40·786981°, –119·204379°
Burning Man, Black Rock Desert, Nevada
What pushed you to start Daily Overview?
About four years ago, I learned about the “overview
effect” from a movie that I watched. There were
interviews with astronauts who spent a significant
amount of time in space—an experience that
fundamentally changed them as human beings. They
came back to Earth with a greater sense of connectivity
with others and an understanding of how fragile the
planet was, and they wanted to share this shift in
perspective to other people. I became obsessed with the
idea and couldn’t stop thinking about its potential to
change the way we see the world and treat each other.
I was inspired to bring it to more people.
We started sharing the images on social media, primarily
on Instagram and Facebook, where we built an audience
and a following. The media wrote about it, which was
great, and that kind of got it off the ground. That led to
the book happening. It’s gone from one step to the next
slowly but surely.
The most important thing at the end of the day is
that we had very good content. Every single day trying
to get a good new picture up for a number of years, it
gave people something to look forward to, something
that they are excited to receive.
How do you source or create the satellite imagery
used for the project?
We work with a few satellite companies that provide
us access to the raw image files, which we artistically
manipulate and clean up. There’s a research, curation,
composition and a writing process to make the whole
thing come to life.
How did you go about making the project a reality?
I had no idea the project was going to grow to
where it is now. I couldn’t have expected those things
(museum exhibitions, book) to occur when I started it.
But what I discovered was that I needed people to follow
along with the progress and to stay interested.
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