So if you have been reading my blog at all you know that I went to India this winter break through the energy, environmental and chemical engineering department at Washington University St. Louis. The trip serves as an introduction to global engineering topics and international experience. Part of the course was to write an essay about the trip as a whole and share what you got out of the trip. As a visual minded photographer there was no way I was going to spend my time communicating this experience with just words so I needed to find another way.
This summer I was introduced to something called story maps a beautiful mixture of visual media, text and maps in one online platform. The platform is powered by Arcgis, a map building suit, and is now in a new iteration of developing the story map suit. Before when I first learned of these a deep knowledge of GIS was needed and it was a bit clunky to use but this year they have created it with every creator in mind. Much like a drag and drop website works (Squarespace) the GIS program does the heavy lifting of design, creating easy maps, multi screen functionality, and accessibility.
So while this story map is not even close to what I have envisioned it to be I am proud to share with you my first attempt at a story map. My hope is that in the future this becomes a regular part of my creative process a new medium to tell stories.