Hello.
Thank you very much for, I would say, for inviting me to talk at this
conference. But actually I emailed Mountain. So can I come and talk at
this conference? Um and he said yes. So thank you, Matt
on dit sze Wonderful to just just just be here on the event of the
centennial is Well, it's a fantastic opportunity. So I'm here to discuss a
map I made about Grand Canyon. You probably been looking at it over the
last day, or so it's It's this really charming, delightful happy map about
everybody that's died in the every known death I should say that's
occurred in Grand Canyon, thes to kind of crazy looking maps that have
been on the wall over here. So this is a talk about that map on my
relationship with that map. Some of the trials tribulations of making it
on some of the issues that have risen as a as a function of making it s o.
In twenty twelve, I made this map I had recently arrived in Israel. I
started as Rian, twenty, eleven Andi I came to every to help share our
work flows, help people learn how to make better maps using the free
software. Of course, you're after good content. You're after useful
information on the people. Khun sort of gravitate to and be interested.
You know, getting eyes on the map is a really, really important
characteristic, making that map speak to people in a way that attracts the
men. So in twenty twelve, I made this map of all known deaths in Grand
Canyon. And actually it's two maps. It's a it's a print map on. It's also
a Web map, both of which required very different approaches. Goes to the
cartographic aspect that I wanted to to work with. So it's It's a story
about this map. Will these maps inspired by another story? But how did I
ever get to the point of being fascinated with such a macabre subject for
a map? Well, like many people interested in maps, you can point your truck
childhood, and you can all normally find an exact moment. When things
began to fall into place. My father was an academic geologist. Back in the
East Midlands in the middle of the UK, my home was often filled with
abstract geologic maps of who knows where it's all made up right on. My
father was good at making up geology maps. In fact, he made up the geology
of Southern Norway, if you're interested. So I poured over the maps on DH
Way. Also had a subscription to National Geographic on. You know, I always
loved it when they would come through the door with a little red label on
the spine. Meant it had a map. So, you know, you sort of you tip it open
on the map, falls on you spend some time with the map. So July nineteen,
seventy eight, spine simply said the Grand Canyon on DH. I opened up the
map. Is a nine year old boy in the middle of England on DH? That was what
I saw on. We've heard a lot about this, this fantastic map. But perhaps
more than any this is the one that led me into a career in geography,
which are enjoyed it school and eventually, cartography, which I enjoyed
university and fell into a career in it. I didn't know who Bradford and
Barbara Washburn was as a nine year old boy in England. I didn't care. I
was I was looking at that on. That was the inspiration. That was a map
that inspired me. I didn't even know it was a masterpiece there, You know
, right now, I believe it is. It's one of the best map. Something that has
ever been made. The colors, the shades, the textures. It felt more like a
painting to me. Um, even though I was looking and extremely accurate map,
of course. What did it evoke it very feelings of. I'm gonna go to that
place sometime and doesn't look like that. Is this Is this a reality?
So on some level, I also need it. Becoming a geographer and making maps
like this was something that I wanted. Tio Dio, so fast forward had to
wait another twenty five years before I got an opportunity to visit in the
summer of two thousand three on That's me with my better half, Linda at
the top Mother campground on. If you could turn around. She's watching now
I'll be home later. Um, so we're on a month long road trip from San Fran
all the way through some of the you know, the country's most fantastic
scenery and iconic locations way stumped up at the camp ground. It turns
out Grand Canyon did look a little bit like that map. You know, when you
sort of first see that you get past all of the stuff in the village and
you see that the sort of overlooks is stunning. Andi, I also got to go
again last year with my brother and his family and do the old helicopter
bit in a canyon. And that was that was fantastic. Um, so what did I use?
What Matt did I use when I got there? Well, we heard about the shift today.
Who knew I'd actually get to meet Tom Patterson, let alone count him as a
friend? But, you know, in two thousand three, when I turned up at the gate
and has handed one of Tom's fantastic maps again, I didn't know who had
done it, but it was a map that obviously guided me around, uh, canyon.
So Linda and I was struck by the Majesty. We were just two Brits camping,
surrounded by deadly animals. Because we don't have deadly animals in the
UK
on DH on, you know, it gets very dark at night in the campground on. We
were halfway through the trip, and we've run out of reading material. So I
went to the visit center and look for something to read in the camper
tonight. Toe one another on DH. You know, I was immediately drawn to this
This book. Uh, I don't know why,
but, you know, this is a This is what Michael Gilly Arian Thomas Mai's
over the age of death in Grand Canyon had been published in two thousand
one. And it was great because she could just flick through and see all
these fascinating, often heart rending stories, sometimes humorous stories
, how people actually got themselves in some trouble. Um, and I really
enjoyed the book, but if you've read a book, there's not a lot of maps in
there. There's general location maps, and I want to know where these
events had taken place. Okay, so that's
excuse me, that that's the book practice. Little gory, certainly McCarty,
but filled with lots of amazing stories. On a side note, it was brought in
sharp focus, too, is when we were on one of the the buses that go around
the rim on DH. A lady was getting off the front of the bus. I think it was
the bright angel trail head on, the driver's said. Excuse me, what? Where
you going? What are your plans? Andi, she said. I think I'm going to hike
down into the canyon and then I'm going to get a mule ride back on. He
looked at her, as did the rest of the bus. She was dressed in a short
skirt, pink bikini top, flip flops on her feet with a small bottle of
water on. The driver said, You will die, Andi, Andi, she she didn't go
down and check, since she's not in the book. So yeah, so the driver
doesn't want and just drive. But you know, it's It's in stark contrast. We
go, there is tourists, but it's Ah, it's extremely hostile environment,
and you could get into a lot of a lot of trouble. So fast forward again.
Twenty eleven. After twenty years of working in cartography in the UK, I
left academia. I went to every on this map was rolled up in the corner of
one of my coworkers offices. It was done by Scott, part of U. S. G s. It's
a map made in three days. Remember my role as remarries to help develop
work flows and teach people how to make maps often kind of crazy maps. So
I had this idea to reinvent this map, but the map had already been created.
I didn't just want to remake that map. I wanted to do something with it.
So I had this idea ofthe mapping where deaths that occurred on top ofthe
this map in all its gory three Deena's. So I got in touch with Michael
asses. Permission Teo used the book is a source on DH spent some
considerable time locating all of these deaths. There were about seven
hundred seventy, four hundred fifty separate incidents. He'd mapped them
according to ah name, you know, a mile down bright angel trail or a
particular point of the River River mile roughly. So that's what the
source data data was. But, you know, if you're working in a joyous you
need that longs. So I had to create that. That data itself? Um, he also,
as it turned out, send me a pdf off twenty twelve update of the book just
before publication. So I was very grateful, for that Meant that the map
was going to be update to the point at which it was going to be published.
So what about the three day? Well, we heard a little bit yesterday about
Annika. Lives were probably very familiar with these horrible looking
images where you have a blue and a red slightly officer image on DH. The
glasses you wear filter out the blue in the red light, send a different
image to each eye, and you get this false stereo perspective. But the US
GS map used a different technique called okay.
Crime. Miss Dairy, Oscar P. All right After Me Chroma Steri, Oscar P.
Crime Misterio It's not easy to say,
but it's a technique where you don't offset. The image is what you do is
you encoded debt using color. Um, And on the left, there is an an English
version. This is Mount St Helens, and on the right is a chroma
stereoscopic version. Red is encoded, is closer to your eyes, blue is
encoded, furthest away, and all the colors of the rainbow fit in between.
It's not a color scheme I would recommend for ninety nine point nine
percent of maps, but it's pretty good if you want to make a chroma
stereoscopic man, The better way of describing this is I'm sure some of
you know this is the greatest ever album.
Created, but it's a very simple principle. White light hits a prism and
with different components of the electromagnetic spectrum, are refracted
in different ways, and red is refracted closer and blue is refracted
further away. So that's that's all you need is the glasses, right?
Um, you can tell how long, Long ago I made this mop I still had here on
DSO. I've put a few of these glasses out foryou. You've probably been
looking at the map with them occasionally on DH. If you see one of these
little glass symbols in the top right of the slides as I cycled through
the remainder of the presentation, you should be able to put the glasses
on and see some three D ish in us. It doesn't work for everybody. There
was a question this morning about how do you deal with colored
deficiencies and different types of seeing. This's a map for that kind of
ninety percent. You have what we might call kind of normal color vision,
so this won't work for everybody. And I'm I'm sorry about that, but
nowhere accommodating everybody's viewing types and styles. It's it's a
matter very much that depends on the ability to to see that color so you
can put the glasses on and you should be able to see that color chart on
the left. Reds should appear closer to you, and then progressively you go
through to the dark blues that recede away.
Okay, um so the color of any individual map element in its immediate
surrounding determine where it sits in the visual hierarchy off the map.
Cartographers often use visual hierarchy to bring things closer to the
viewing point to accentuate or emphasize certain things. And it makes
other things recede into the background Here. I'm kind of just, you know,
turning up to eleven and using color toe. Really push that. That contrast.
All right, so I built a color ramp in Ark map Who remembers our map? Okay
, um, it's probably any time I mention our matter how someone else in a
minute. But, you know, you build a color ramping arc mapping algorithmic
color ramp and you set about creating the basement, which starts with a
digital elevation model, and actually a lot of the techniques that I'm
employing a very, very similar to the way in which Tom Patterson was
describing his work for yesterday. The difference is I'm using Astri
software. He was largely using adobe. It's kind of two separate ways to
get to a similar end point, and this is a typical hill shade with
Northwest illuminated source at two hundred thirty five degrees on forty
five degree angle. I'm gonna come back to that in a moment. That was my
basic hill shape. I had elevation tents or hip symmetric tints based on
that new chroma stereoscopic color ramp. Slightly muted because I didn't
want really pure colors to be shouting and screaming at people and giving
everyone a headache. But you can put those together, crunch them with a
technical pan chromatic sharpening,
and you end it with red plateaus, greens and browns down through the
canyon on down to what will eventually become another beautiful blue
Colorado River. Um, does it work for you? Okay, good. Um, now, if you
remember that Mount St Helens image a moment ago, it looks a bit bizarre.
You know, a mountain peak that's red. Where is usually you would see
whites or purples of something else to commentate elevation. But I thought
with the Grand Canyon red plateaus and then descending through color in
the canyon actually wasn't too far of a stretch. Um, it didn't seem too
weird, even though clearly it's completely made a coloring. So I then,
from the book from Gilly area in Maya's book, went through, plotted on a
map. I helped design these pictograms,
which we're trying to symbolize the character off the incident or the
circumstances of the death. It's actually a zit. Turns out pretty
difficult to design symbols when you're you know, you've got suicide and
other pretty horrific events.
But we thought we did a pretty good job on DH. I started putting these
symbols on the map. The only difficulty was always having to use a lot of
leader lines because it turns out a lot of people didn't venture far from
the south rim. Um, which has been lazy if you're gonna kill yourself,
quite frankly. So when you've got this giant map, okay, you've got this
beautiful environment and you find out they're actually most apart from
one or two. Most deathly incidents occur in a very small space. You've got
this classic cartographic problem of scale content, big geography, small
concentrated area. But that's just the problem to deal with. So I don't
with it here with a lot of leader lines on DH, I ended it with this man.
Um, final map layout includes the addition of text context, your detail
she's symbolized on, and I was by design going for a comic book aesthetic
. I was going for a very visceral, um,
sort of esthetic. Where it's designed to get a response was a large poster.
And so there are these speech bubbles with maybe half a dozen or so
descriptions from the book off how certain circumstances evolved. But it's
a fixed, fixed scale because it's a paper map, which meant the top left
had to have the insect for the South Rim on. I also feel a little bit
uncomfortable this map because, of course, the really in really in
interesting area is in the top left. Maybe I should have switched it.
Maybe the canyon should have gone in the top left and South Room should
have been the main map. But then you don't get the majesty of the entire
dragon, Um, so that that's the map and we actually printed it at, and this
is just about full size. This is Linda again, high for scale on we printed.
This is a gigantic map of one of our user conferences on Do you know this
? People with glasses, and it's a bit of a thrill when you see your your
work printed at that size, isn't it?
It's a wonderful thing to see people actually go up to a map that big and
start touching it. And, you know, you've got people when they're touching
it. Pointing and getting that reactions is wonder. So obviously, I wrote
blog's and things to describe how people can make these things, um,
feedback. Generally. People, um, I liked the map, but, you know, I will be
totally honest. There was some criticism on the criticism was off the type
of I think you've been a little bit too graphic, perhaps not quite as
respectful as you could have been. You know, one person said, you know all
that red. It looks a little bit like blood splattered all over the map.
And when you're dealing with subjects of death, you know, maybe I hadn't
been a sensitive is I perhaps could have been
So you know, you take on board some of this on you, think about your your
work. It got a lot of decent press, actually wanted International
Cartographic Association Award for the Best Best Mac for one one year. It
was highlighted in another book where, actually, one of my my friend and
colleagues, Alex, can set an immersion into a sensory experience that is
perhaps reminiscent of film director Quentin Tarantino's work.
All right. Okay. Um, and even last year, it turned upon Slovenian national
TV, where one of mine, our colleagues in cartography a Duchin Petrovich
was there talking about maps that have kind of peaked people's attention
in the past few years on the print map itself has been downloaded one and
a half thousand times.
So what about a Web version? Well, you can't put all those points on a map
because you live on his opponent. You get death by pushpin. You know the
classic one dot for every incident. So I wanted to employ a technical
binning which aggregate data that is closely
located at smaller scales. So you end up creating set of bins. I used
hexagons because hexagons best shape ever. Andi, you can see now that in
certain parts of the South Rim particular twenty deaths, four deaths,
whatever, I turned the pictograms symbols into hexagons to align It turns
out that triangle is don't test like what they do tests late. But you have
to have upside down triangles if you're going to go that way. So hexagons
became at the shape of choice. Um
And then if we're creating a single map, Okay, You have one scale and you
have to make certain decisions on the mat becomes the map for a Web map.
You're in a multi scale environment, so you basically have to make a CZ
many different maps for each scale so that each scale it works on that.
The transition between scales also works. So don't let anybody tell you
Web maps a simple okay, there they're pretty simple to make, but to make
them work at multiple scales, there's a little bit of a task, and I'm not
going to go through the detail of this. But you could just see by how that
grid is completed, that there are lots of different decisions about
content, visibility at different scales, and it ended up looking a little
bit like that. It was fairly clunky, but that was only because our Web
technology was fairly rudimentary in the very early stages. Back in twenty
twelve on, this is the first desperation of the Web map. Ondas, you zoom
in. You go from those hexagons down into the individual symbols. Um, I
never liked this map. The benefit of the Web map meant that you can click
on each of these icons and actually get the details. What happened? Who
died? What were the circumstances? What was the source material? Whether
it was a newspaper reporter, a national parks Service, instant report and
so on. You can't do that with a print match, So they're obviously very
good reasons why you might want your information as a Web map and not a
print map. I never liked you. Although I checked it been viewed about one
hundred twenty thousand times a until a few weeks a day which isn't quite
three and a half million of Tom's maps. But I'LL take it so I always
wanted to update them. You need two things You need a reason to update on
D you need new data? Um, because any map like this that sadly data is out
of date almost assumes the map is out. Um, on DH, I just need an excuse.
And the excuse came in the rather bizarre fashion off fresh Prince of Bel
Air. So he turned fifty last year. Andi, hey, was going bungee jump out of
a helicopter over the canyon to celebrate on DH. I just turned fifty and I
went out for a nice meal, so that probably okay. He probably explains a
lot. Anyway, the production company got in touch. That's seen the map.
They wanted to use it. They wanted my map on. And I was a little concerned.
Is will Smith going to end up on my map? But anyway, you know the
possibility of having you work alongside Will Smith in one of these
productions? I thought, Yeah, let's do it. Why not? So off I went on dh.
So that's, well, bungee jumping. He survived the National Park Service
search and rescue guys Very helpful. They gave me updated information to
the end of last year,
and I said about creating the map. I wanted to improve the hill shade.
Remember, that's the old Hill shade. There's lots of problems with it on
DH. I'm just gonna fix to the new one. There's actually actually sixty
different hill shades going on in there alone, smooshed together to create
something that maybe shows the bedding a little bit better. The steepness
of some of the cliff edges and someone and then I have dated the colors
and turned it into into that. So I saturated my are saturated my chroma
stereoscopic elevation tensy mawr to push it up a little bit. So that,
perhaps, helps the three D experience. Remember that original Grand Canyon
map? Tibor Toth use a lot of saturated stuff. And actually, the hill
shading did similar sort of job very dramatic.
And so I went from this map to this map. The new map. Um, they spent about
a hundred new deathly incident since the twenty twelve version, which this
map incorporates.
Does it work? In three days. All right, let's take a little vote. Do you
prefer the new one Hansa or the old one? So new one
old one.
OK, eso improving on your work is a great cartographic tenant, so there's
less red. It's less dramatic. It's perhaps less visceral, visceral, but
perhaps that's amore.
Long term usability. Um, there's now a satellite image behind it, so it's
not completely red. This is kind of a focused area. I decided not to
encode elevation intothe symbol so it keeps it cleaner and more simple.
There's still an insect, but I've managed not to have any leader lines on
this map, which was a challenge. But that's what car cartography is about
to make the challenge.
He's already shown me five minutes. Now you show me five minutes. I'm
going with you.
So I downplayed the three D characteristic. I downplayed that comic book
aesthetic, got it back to something that perhaps is a little more standard
but still has that three D nous. It's perhaps more harmonious. They're
shouting. I would still contend that if you went Tio Matt Gallery, that
red map, the really read one, would draw you in first, but you would
probably go to that one on the right more often. You probably wouldn't go
back to the the harsh, Bright Red and then the Web because a timeout time
, I'm not going to go out to the live map. I'm just show us few stills.
The Web version is is very similar to the print version, but you can click
on the hexagons and get information about the summary of everything that
happened at that particular point. Technically, if you come to the house,
we use a conference next July. I'Ll tell you how this is made differently
to the previous one. There's a lot of different stuff, but in very, very
quick way art. Matt was a pain in the proverbial to get this onto the Web.
Now we use are just pro, and it's literally right quick, right click
publish. And there it is. So a lot has happened technologically in the
last six or seven years. That has made this map far more easily published
to the Web. If only that happened several years ago might still have a bit
more head. You know that's life, so
The other thing I've been doing just to kind of finish up over the last
year or so is is Write a book on DH. Memory started this story with a book.
We went to the bookshop and bought the book, and it became a map on DH.
I've written a book that I've now been able to put my work into. It is
kind of turning around, but that's a little bit arrogant putting your own
work in a book. So I've also put what I still considered to be one of the
world's best maps in the book and with a lovely commentary by the current
director of Carter, director of Cartography, National Geographic, marking
the mash on who expresses his view of this map. Has the work that went
into this map set the bar for what cartographic excellence was? It still
does on DH. You know, someone like me from a nine year old to fifty making
maps I still can't make a map is good, is this? But that's the beauty of
mapping. You can still keep trying so
whatever happened to my math being used in the world? Smith Bungee jump
film? It didn't.
It ended up on the cutting room floor, but to my mind, that's a lot better
than will end in upon the canyon floor and me having to put him on the on
the map. So I've got one final slide. But before I get to that, I put
these glasses out on one of them. I, um I left my business card and it
said, written on the card. Do not discard. So who found that?
Come back to you in about thirty seconds. So the final slide. Thank you
very much for for listening.
I'm contractually obliged. Teo put that up there. But those two euros at
the top of the first one takes you to the Web map of this newly updated
map. The second one takes you to a pdf, which you can download to your
leisure and print out. If you so wish so they're both both free. You can
take them and use them. You, khun, by the book, if you like, it's actually
quite good.
This gentleman down here gets a free copy.
Okay,
so that that's it. That's my Friday. Thank you very much.
That was an amazing
amazing president.
It was quite good. I was so good. It broke the speaker already broken
microphones. So we have time for a couple questions for Dr Field anybody?
So Justin to pick a little less. I'm sure. You know. Well, Smith jumped
into the little Colorado. Yeah, he was outside. Boundaries. So that least
me, where do you draw the boundaries for your map? Mean, since there, some
of these deaths are happening in the Colorado drainage, but outside the
boundaries of I think they're all within the national park boundaries. If
I'm right, okay. Yeah, I have to go back. Check. Okay, because I know I
know the park service didn't allow him to do things like that. Are you
know, the other people trying to you know, the fact that the map showed
earlier? I didn't put the boundary on, but his little bungee thing came.
Thanks, Little Colorado.
We'LL come back that way.
Several years ago. I ready are actually skim read a book and Hayden
Library. And at that time there were two California students, college
students who had a wild, uh, several weeks by going down the Colorado. And
at that time, because no one knew where they were, they were rumored to be
dead in the Colorado. Turned out later on, they hiked up the South Rim.
And when they found him that park people wouldn't let him go back and
continue the trip. But with some fast talking, they were able to continue
the trip. I'm just wondering, have you run into that particular story?
Because I don't even remember the title of it. But they wrote a pretty
sizable book about that. I'm wondering if you have very many near misses
where people have been reported, and I think that was reported in papers
all over the country. Have you run into that guy? So the short answer is
no. But I'll give you the reason. Like many cartographers who are
interested in mapping data, we don't care about the subject matter too
much. It's just data. It's a map. Okay. Um, so you know, I take my source.
I'll trust my source. I report my source
the park service. They say our guys have given me up the updated data. I
trust that is the source. But, Mike Mike, my role in this is to make a map
ofthe that data you're going out and doing under the euro twos with the
research to fill in the gaps. And that's that's for the Washburn's of this
world. You know? You know, I make this map in a week or so and I move on
to another map, and that's part of what I do, say, yeah.
Um, I was wondering if, uh, thiss topic is pretty macabre. Pretty Grimm. I
was wondering, though, if this was the first time that you've really
mapped out something like this a similar topic or and if in the future you
want to look into other, you know, very complex topic. So I have a I have
a Web site at work. Carter dot maps dot are just dot com. And if you go
there, there's actually a really frightening pattern. I'm it turns out I
end up mapping a lot of deathly stuff. Um, I'm not going to show you now,
but yeah, I have to get away from some of this at times because, you know
, a lot of times date data is
it's all past events and clearly dead people are past events, so it
becomes a good data source. So I ended up doing that quite a bit, but
wherever possible, you know, maps of soccer maps of football for May, maps
of iris surnames, you know, you name it. You can Just good data that
creates a good thematic map is the key
Hi. Um, did you think about doing any, um, heat maps or anything for types
of death? S o. The types of death are broadly encoded in those symbols.
Okay. You know, you could You could perhaps make slightly more symbols
because, you know, Rive Aries is river traveler. It's crossing the river.
It's drowned while swimming the sorts of different subcategories
categories. But, you know, I felt maybe nine or ten symbols did did a good
enough job. Fall is another one, Is it? Fall in the canyon on the rim,
crossing a road, is it? What is it? So you have to make those decisions
about generalizing your data in your categories to a point which you think
works that map heat maps. That's a great one on DH. This has been live
stream, so be careful what I say by hate. Heat maps
largely because they formed this amorphous blob of something. Okay, each
of those points is a point. I can see where something happened. If I
aggregate into this sort of blob that shades out with transparent just
someone known area in the classic. One is you take. You take any maps
where you're maybe mapping something occurs on land. Let's say the entire
West Coast, the USA, so many clothes on land, you create a heat map. That
symbol goes off into the Pacific Ocean. But clearly the events can happen
there. So you have been very careful when you making heat maps that you
work within the bounds of logic. People are gonna believe what they see.
Not necessarily, no. The processes that you've gone through is a
cartographer to get there and therefore able to reflect on that. As part
of that, they're seeing that sort of answer. Is it now
so I actually I don't have a question and a comment. I was thinking, maybe
for your next map. Uh, considering that you liked a Pink Floyd dark side
of the moon, perhaps you could do a death map of lunar rovers on the dark
side of the moon and three D.
Okay?
Just remember me when you publish that man. All right, let's get on Mars.
If that helps, I put David Bowie on the map. What do you want,
huh? All right, let's give Dr Field around of applause. Thank you. Thank
you.