More Google art

The other day, I was doing a virtual drive through my hometown, during which I discovered the artistic -- the virtual photographic -- possibilities of the "street view" option on Google Maps.

Tonight, I thought I'd do the same with my present home, Omaha., Neb. Likewise, I thought I'd try the same subject matter -- the original transmission tower outside the studios of one of the city's venerable television stations.

So, here's the "street view," artistically selected, of KETV, Channel 7, at 27th and Douglas Street in downtown Omaha. I call this photography for the Facebook age.

AND I DO THINK there are possibilities in this for developing students' "artistic eye" in the classroom . . . and for photographers planning cityscape shoots before they get to the city and have to shoot "scapes."

On a personal level, though, I find I can just go to Google maps and virtually do what my late father-in-law did tangibly more than half a century ago when crews were erecting the Channel 7 tower, now the station's auxiliary transmission site.

OMAHA was a smaller place in 1957, television still had a large element of the whiz-bang to it and -- face it -- pleasures largely were of the "simple" variety. At least comparatively.

Back then, as a promotional thing, the future Channel 7 started the KETV Tower Watchers Club, and Dad was "hereby admitted to the circle of those who regularly observe the rise at 27th and Douglas Streets of this newest addition to Omaha's skyline."

I probably would have joined, too.

After all, I am the guy coaxing virtual art photography out of the functional, "how the hell to I get there" world of Google's "street view" gizmo.