All Over the Map

A year and a half ago Betsy Mason, a journalist and blogger for National Geographic, asked if I’d like to collaborate on a map for her upcoming book, “All Over the Map”. I couldn’t say absolutely fast enough. Here’s the resulting map…

Betsy had seen the initial Old Lights & New Lights map showing unchanged and new nighttime lights, based on the sweet just-released NASA imagery of an updated Earth at Night global composite, and made hurriedly the day of the release.

And she’d seen the follow-up map that showed where lights turned on or off in the intervening years.

Betsy liked the lightness and contrast of the first map, but wondered if we could show all three conditions (diminished, unchanged, and new lights) at once. It was a fun series of back-and-forths and we finally landed with the version that’s in the book (up top, there).

Anyway, it’s for realz in print now. Which is comforting to a person whose work is largely rendered as ethereal pixels walking gingerly over ever-shifting technology sands. Check it out.