Crooked Captures

With flashy renderings dominating news feeds and high-flying drones filming from otherwise inaccessible vantage points, our encounters with the built environment increasingly involve perspectival views, but not necessarily those experienced firsthand. As tools for image production and consumption evolve, so too will methods for studying historical precedents. Crooked Captures treats this proliferation of digital images as fertile ground for photogrammetric explorations into how two-dimensional imaging techniques can influence three-dimensional form. While photogrammetry, the process of determining spatial measurements of physical objects from photographic inputs, has been an area of investigation for almost two centuries, the technique’s potential has blossomed with increased access to high quality cameras. Typical photogrammetric applications couple high-fidelity scanning and computing to produce faithful digital copies of physical artifacts and scenes for measuring and surveying. Leading photogrammetry software packages promise accuracy and precision, touting the exact replication of physical forms in digital space—so-called reality capture—as an indisputable virtue.