Playing with pictures

I am the screengrab queen. No photoshop, just the crappy paint program, and some screengrabs from my good friend g o o g l e. I have 2 pieces that are panoramic "drawings" in thread of views of the city, and I'm wondering if I can whip out one more before February and my solo show arrives.

 I would use these photo collages to create a line drawing to transfer to fabric. they're views of 2 places I've lived. I think the streetviews are funny time capsules. I don't know how often they are updated, but not very. Sometimes the streetviews are a shock- like the empty lot on the right in the picture above used to be a boarded -up building that gave you chills to walk by. In the picture below there should be a whole new building mid-right.

I've always loved panoramic photos. When I was a teenager I had a "panoramic camera"- it had a lens that just cropped the standard photo format to a slice. Although it might have had a slightly fish-eyed lens... I forget. I loved the pinhole cameras made out of oatmeal boxes we'd use in my first photo class. The paper bent around the back of the canister would create great distortions of perspective but in incredibly sharp focus. I also have a series of family photos in vacation spots made much like my collages above- but with one of us standing on one side of the photo, then a quick photographer switch for the other to stand in the opposite side of the photo. (I really don't like handing my camera over to strangers). One of my favorite photographers was Art Sinsabaugh who took amazing panoramas of the midwest and Chicago with one of those cameras that was meant for taking long group photos. Come to think of it, my grandparents had one of those panoramic graduation photos hanging over the "davenport" (as they called the sofa). I think this love for panorama might go back farther than I realized....

This whole streetview thing is a little creepy. But I think I might be on to something that I want to work on.