Larry Ammann

Biography

People have always been fascinated by views of our planet from vantage points other than our own eyes. Artists and photographers have trekked to remote lands or ascended to great heights by balloon, airplane and spacecraft to show our planet as we cannot see it from the surface. We now have a new source of art and wonder provided by remote sensing satellites, showing us how the Earth can be seen as art.

A number of books have been published that contain images of earth from space And of course there are a large number of web sites that contain such images. Yet these mostly have left Larry Ammann unsatisfied. Almost all of these images are oriented towards showing us specific places with unimaginative, although realistic colors schemes. Ansel Adams demonstrated by capturing light and shadows generated by the natural wonders of our world, that these places are also magnificent artistic wonders. Part of what makes his photographs great art is that in addition to showing us places, they also show us abstract compositions and shapes that could have been created by a great painter. Larry's use of remote sensing satellite data shows our planet in ways that our eyes are incapable of seeing, and as a result, reveals the abstract compositions, shapes, and colors of the Earth that are hidden in this data.

Remote sensing satellites do not take photographs like ordinary film or digital cameras. Instead, they capture the reflected energy at each of several narrow bands of wavelengths of light, including visible and infra-red. Every type of material such as different rock types, minerals, vegetation and crops, buildings and other artifacts of civilization all reflect electromagnetic energy differently. Most of these differences occur in the infra-red portion of the spectrum. Because Larry uses infra-red data to make the images, the colors that result from his image processing are not real in the sense that they are not colors that we can see with our eyes.

Please note that these images are not taken from any other web site and they are not photographs taken from space that have been reprocessed. Photographs cannot capture the detail nor can they differentiate among different features like the sensors on remote sensing satellites. The result is a unique view of an area that can be seen as a 4-dimensional image. Viewed from afar, the basic shapes and colors have been mistaken as paintings by many who have seen these prints. But viewed much closer, the details and textures of the surface get finer and finer the closer you come to the print.

"The Earth is a beautiful oasis in a vast, mostly empty, universe. My goal with this work is to increase appreciation for the unique beauty of our small planet. I hope I have succeeded." Larry Ammann

Larry Ammann is a professor of Statistics and Associate Department Head of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. He received his PhD in Statistics from Florida State University and recently was on leave at the Southwestern Medical Center's Advanced Imaging Research Center at the University of Dallas.