@hundred wunders
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • BLOG
  • SHOP
  • IMAGES
  • CONTACT

Google Search by Image

3/5/2017

0 Comments

 
Louis Caron (1848-1917) founded an architectural dynasty that contributed more than 150 residences and ecclesiastical buildings to the Bois-Francs region of Québec, designed primarily in the Neo-Gothic style. Gothic Revival architecture in Canada was imported from Britain and endured until the 1930s. Victorian eclecticism, with its mansard roofs and fancy embellishments, also influenced the appearance of many towns, and can still be seen today. 
Picture
Picture
Picture
In an attempt to identify one such building, which I photographed in 2009, I discovered both Louis Caron and what I still believe to be a little known online tool with lots of potential.
   Google Search by Image provides an alternative to scouring the Internet for information via key words and text. You can start with a file of your own or choose one on the Web, then drag and drop, upload, right-click or paste a URL, depending on your needs.
Picture
Once you’ve added your file, Google will generate a series of results according to various parameters, which you can guess at by examining the selections returned below. Foremost will be the colour palette, so our mysterious Victoriaville photo, which was desaturated and modified using an antique filter, generated images in the same range. ​
Picture
Most of the images treat a similar subject, in this case, a building; if you plug in a picture of a red car, you’ll get mostly red cars parked in the same position. But then it gets more interesting. Looking at the examples, you’ll see that composition and geometry play a significant part, and that each picture has several such elements in common with others. Artists will connect with this immediately: strong perspective views, lighter fields of ‘sky’ or ‘ceiling’, squares, triangles, arches, and blocks of dark that contrast with the pallor of the overall image. ​

Finally, all of these images comes with a story: the Vietnamese village of 30 old French villas, a fleet of floating hotels on the Providence River, some Sci-fi guy who is building a model of a frontier power generator at a plasma plantation, a shop-front in the tiny Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye, where the ratio of bookstores to residents is approximately 1:60… The possibilities for artists, authors and historians are literally endless.
Picture
Photo credit: Pierre Girouard
You may wonder at the usefulness of the resource, as it is fundamentally random, which is perhaps why Google hasn’t promoted it much. What would one use this for, exactly? Google suggests: “… if you search using a picture of your favorite band, you can find similar images, websites about the band, and even sites that include the same picture. Search by image works best when the image is likely to show up in other places on the web. So you’ll get more results for famous landmarks than you will for personal images like your latest family photo.” 

​But that’s not the reason I like it so much. It is playful and silly and rather purposeless - but not entirely. In my case, the tool saved me from having to sift 
randomly ​through archival photographs and historical sources online in the hopes of falling accidentally on a picture of a building for which I had no name, address or architect. And let's face it: Victoriaville, Québec, is not a major tourist destination - despite its many well-deserved (but lesser-known) claims to fame.
Picture
Search by Image does return a list of the instances of a specific image online, much like Reverse Image Search by TinEye, which can assist the user in tracing rights owners or infringements. But it also scans the content of the image using some kind of magical algorithm. And this produces results that will be pleasing to all types of users with infinitely diverse missions. At the very least, it is likely to quench one's curiosity about all those snapshots of unanswered questions that tend to rattle about in an avid traveller's luggage. 

​For me, its value is best described by the old adage: a picture is worth a thousand words... and it's why I now know my anonymous, iconic building to be the Grand Union Hotel, Victoriaville est. 1875, designed by the famed 19th century architect, Louis Caron. Set right beside a now defunct railroad, I can only imagine the action this place saw back in the day, when it must have been the swankiest inn in town.
QUÉBEC, CANADA
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Author

    The author is an artist, writer, and instructional designer with an overactive imagination and too little time. Ceci en est un exemple...
    ​

    RSS Feed


    Pssst... want to advertise your travel guide or products on hundred wunders? Contact us!

    Picture
    Follow

    Categories

    All
    Amusement
    Architecture
    Art
    Audio
    Britain
    Canada
    Desert
    Forest
    History
    Island
    Mountain
    Ocean
    Opinion
    Park
    Photography
    River
    Shopping
    Town
    Transportation
    United States

    Picture

    Picture

    Recommended

    Environnement-voyages
    en français
    GPSmyCity.com
    Trip.com
    Ask Wonder
    ​
    The Blind Blogger
    ​
    Women & Wanderlust
    ​Streetfilms
    Grist
    Junkculture
    Rough Guides
    Off the Beaten Path
    Tom Hussey
    Griffintown Tour
    ​


    ​
    Google
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
ⓙⓤⓝⓘⓞⓡⓐⓝⓖⓔ