On the way home yesterday I picked up a discount book at a highway rest stop. It caught my eye as it was very cheap (10 euros) and about the Sahara and therefore desert landscapes. It is called 'Sahara - Entre Ciel et Sable' and consists of high quality landscape aerial photos taken while the author flew an open monoplane ULM over a route along Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.
For map makers it is a dream book as it gives many many stunning landscapes - both natural as well as of villages and agricultural areas. As a book it gives very inspiring landscapes, almost like it was made for an Il-2 map maker. The contrasts between irrigated fields and desert is very exceptional and a useful visual tool. This contrast has always been very frustrating to replicate on a map. And here it is shown with a simple photographic clarity. The villages are also shown in detail giving examples of how to make a populated village in Il-2 terms with existing objects.
Should anyone be interested, I cannot recommend it enough as a research tool full of examples of how to get desert landscapes made on a map. One of the nicer and useful facet about the book is that for each photo it gives Earth coordinates which make it easy to look up the same area on programs such as Google Earth for texture creating. Even the color palettes shown are an inspiration to map makers.
http://www.amazon.fr/Sahara-Entre-sable-Christophe-Gruault/dp/2749906938/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347486843&sr=1-1Kapteeni once sent me a somewhat similar book on Finnish landscapes and it was more than helpful in making the Karelia and Lapland maps ... This one above has me itching to get back into making a desert map ...
So, just a tip ...
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Topic: Book for Desert Map Makers (Read 1137 times)
