The maps and images offered here at Stanton Studio are the gathering together of several ideas that I’ve been working on for a number of years. With the advent of print-on-demand publishing, getting these into a saleable physical form is now a reasonable proposition.

The areas I’ve been working in are photography, digital terrain representation, bicycling maps, and National Park maps.

I’ve been doing photography since 8th grade, but lost a lot of film/print based work in a fire in 1983, and didn’t do much work until digital got good (and less expensive) in the 2000′s. I had used Photoshop since version 1 for mapping work, but only recently discovered the pleasure of manipulating the digital “negative” and “printing” in Photoshop. Not that I’m any expert at this point – reading books and applying their techniques definitely helps. I still have a couple of trusty old Nikkormat EL’s sitting in the cabinet. It might be a good idea to get the 55mm Nikkor macro lens converted for use on the D90.

The Maps-au-Naturel images came from map work where a terrain background was done for a map, and then having it covered up with all sorts of lines and labels. Why not just look at the terrain? Actually, the first Map-au-Naturel was the Piceance Basin image, which is now classified under the cleverly named Maps-Un-Natural line. That sat on the wall for several years. Then I figured that something that resembled the real terrain would be cool, sort of like a satellite or aerial photo, but idealized. It took a lot of experimentation to get the right look, and each terrain is different, requiring a slightly different combination of images and effects.

The bicycling maps are a continuation of a couple of prior self-published print efforts. In 1982, I did a set of seven bicycling maps for the Seattle/Puget Sound, WA area, and then I did a set of three maps for the state park trails around Madison, WI in 1993. I also did a set of four cross-country ski maps for Colorado in 1986, subsequently bought by an outfit called Trails Illustrated, and Trails Illustrated was subsequently bought by an outfit called National Geographic, and the maps were subsequently discontinued. I’ve also done some work for clients wanting maps for their events, such as the Wright Stuff Century west of Madison.
 for the local Bombay Bicycle Club.

Last year I got the idea of adapting the attractive National Park Maps into narrow calendars emphasizing a route through a park, such as Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park. These maps are public domain, and the original map files are available online. While using these maps for a product is not an original idea, it was still fun. Unfortunately the calendars were expensive to produce. So the maps mutated into the cards you see on the website.

So that’s how the items on the website came to be, more or less.