Issue 25: Daily Overview Interview
May 12, 2022
We interview Benjamin Grant, founder of Overview, to discuss his work and artistic process; plus our SkySats take an oblique look at the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.
Feature Story: Interview with Benjamin Grant
What single act can simultaneously make a person appreciate Earth’s beauty more intensely, feel more connected to all living beings, and produce an overwhelming sensation of awe and wonder? Answer: the sight of Earth from space. It’s called the “Overview Effect,” and it was coined to describe the cognitive transformation that dozens of astronauts experienced at that moment when gravity is lost and Earth appears in the rearview porthole.
In 2013, Benjamin Grant was a consultant who ran an office space club. He was amazed by the satellite images he saw on Apple Maps and soon realized their potential to tell powerful stories about the Earth. He founded Overview and embarked on a mission to post one aerial image a day with the hope to inspire awe among viewers. If successful, he could increase the number of people to experience the Overview Effect from the few hundred astronauts who’d been to outer space to a number far greater.
Today, Overview has grown tremendously while retaining its focus of using satellite and aerial imagery to visualize how human and natural activities shape our Earth. Overview has published 3 books and has had images featured in hundreds of international publications and exhibitions. And Benjamin’s original feature, Daily Overview, has 1.1 million followers on Instagram. We sat down — well, Zoomed — with Benjamin to discuss a few questions about the project and his process.
* This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
You’ve been working with satellite imagery daily for nearly a decade now. How has the Overview Perspective shaped your attitude towards Earth and life on it?
I think we can understand so much when we look at the world from above. The perspective just lends itself so nicely to new forms of understanding. Not only bringing statistics to life or showing things that have never been seen before, but also getting the opportunity to understand things at scale — the size of an entire city, a mining facility, or an airport. I’ve always been a visual learner so being able to see something all at once makes it easier to grasp. Take a statistic like “110 million people move through the Atlanta airport every year.” That’s a crazy number, but when you see how many planes are at the terminals at all times and how busy it is, that number takes on a new meaning.
The Earth is vast and constantly changing. How do you choose where to look and determine what images you share?
I think the process has changed a bit over the last almost decade. The number of stories I’ve been able to tell has grown as the number of image providers Overview works with has grown. In the very beginning, when I was just working with Maxar I was able to tell super focused stories about human impact and what that meant, so I created the blog called Daily Overview. As a result of needing to post something every day I was forced more and more to expand that definition of human impact. So I was continually looking for amazing places and patterns that best told that all-encompassing story of what we are doing to the planet.
Since we’ve added more providers like Planet and Nearmap, the scale of those stories has changed in both directions — we’re able to tell more stories on the micro and macro level. There is a separation between the Nearmap, the Maxar, and the Planet vantage points, but when they are thoughtfully combined, you can really blow people’s minds.
Consistent across all of that is a recognition that if you’re going to be sharing these images on social media, you want them to perform as great as possible, regardless of how positive the subject matter is. When you’re composing an image you want to compose it in the best way possible: make the colors pop, remove the haze, make it easier to understand. From the very beginning, I’ve viewed this perspective as a form of abstraction, almost like abstract pieces of art. I realized when you look at the planet from directly above all altitude is lost so it becomes two-dimensional. So you can rotate images to any degree and make them look as good as possible, just as you’d do with paintings. You can compose with the world.
You share a lot of beautiful pictures of the planet, as well as images of environmental degradation, natural disaster, and war. How do you balance these conflicting content types and the stories they tell? And what role do social media algorithms play in story choice?
Interestingly enough, current events have been the subject over the past couple of years that has responded the most positively to the Instagram algorithm. Events like the Ever Given stuck in the Suez Canal or the chaos at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan during the American pull-out have done better than a random picture of a random city. Timeliness matters. But then again, I’m hopeful there will be more uplifting news stories from outer space than war, famine, and climate collapse.
You’ve said you hope Overview’s images inspire awe — a feeling that happens when you’re exposed to something perceptually vast — among viewers. Have you found that certain images inspire awe more effectively than others?
One story comes to mind concerning awe. Someone told me once that he went to the Grand Canyon and he got out of his car and he said “where is it?” He was looking in the direction of the Grand Canyon but it was so mind-bendingly crazy that he didn’t see it. It just looked like the desert or terrain; he didn’t grasp the depth of it. I think that story connects to the most powerful images where you show someone a picture and it looks like an abstract painting or a textile and someone connects to it at first on an artistic level but then they realize it’s “real” and actually exists somewhere on the planet. And you can tell their mind broke a little and had to make sense of it all. That’s what’s happening with awe, like your brain has to develop new mental models to understand what you’ve been exposed to and I think it can truly happen with some of the images in our archive.
Over the years you’ve showcased your work in a variety of ways, from social media to full-blown gallery installations. Do you have a preferred method of medium?
I do have a preferred way. I will say that every image lends itself differently to different mediums. Instagram reduces images down to 1350 pixels, so you’re often losing a large percentage of the image. So if I had to pick one medium it would be murals. It’s the ideal way to show these images because it’s the most immersive experience. The bigger the better. That’s what awe is. You want to feel the scale of these images as much as possible.
Overview is approaching its 10th anniversary. You’ve grown a major Instagram account, published multiple books, and have collaborated with a number of groups on different projects. What’s next for Overview?
Overview needs to continue to have more and more impact. Using the platform that’s been built, we can take an objective view of the world. Objectivity is becoming increasingly rare as our civilization becomes more polarized and truth is questioned. There is something inherent about the view from outer space that isn’t questioned and is often understood and presented as truth. I think that’s why imagery of the war in Ukraine is so powerful at the moment. Organizations have been able to verify and see what’s going on. And it’s essential not just to the war but to understanding what’s going on with the climate as well. We can use this imagery to detail what a better world looks like, maybe that’s a world where more buildings are covered in solar or there’s more vegetation. I don’t have all the answers but I hope satellites are a key part of that story and I hope Overview continues to help tell it in a manner that brings about greater impact.
If you liked what you see, then be sure to follow Overview on Instagram and Twitter, and browse their website. And if you want to hear more about Benjamin’s story, then check out his TED Talk, it’s worth watching every minute!
Bonus: The Cape Cod peninsula is seen flexing over the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. We surely wouldn’t want to arm wrestle that mass of land.
Oblique Mountains
As far as awe-inspiring images go, we think these obliques — photos shot at angle — of California’s Sierra Nevada fare very well. The 400-mile (644-km) long mountain range forms the eastern backbone of the state and shelters Nevada from the worst of the coast’s weather systems and, apparently, California’s high taxes and cost of living. Besides its striking natural beauty, the Sierra is of vital cultural importance to the state. It contains four national parks, hosted the not-very-fun Donner Party, was a major site for the California Gold Rush, and is home to large populations of the California redwood (the state tree). Like the Extremely Large Telescope we showed last week, the Sierra Nevadas, when translated from Spanish, also have a self-descriptive name: snow-capped mountain range. We agree that whoever named them did a pretty good job.
These images were featured in science fiction legend Kim Stanley Robinson’s new book, The High Sierra: A Love Story. Although he is arguably best known for his trilogy set on the planet Mars, his latest work is an exploration of a landscape far closer to home. Check out the book and keep an eye out for these satellite images and more within!
