"OK Glass!" California Landscapes #ThroughGlass

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San Francisco across the Bay - Fort Baker, Marin Headland #throughglass

The project began with answering the question "If I had Glass" and evolved into a photographic journey around San Francisco and the Bay Area discovering some new and revisiting some older, more familiar landscapes to photograph using Google Glass,

Earlier this year, I was selected to participate in the Google Glass Explorer Program. After collecting my device in New York (in the color "Shale") I set about practicing the art of using my new Glass to take pictures.

I soon discovered that it’s not that easy. I found it difficult to align Glass to capture images with straight horizons or verticals. That wasn't all: peripheral vision makes framing rather hit and miss; it's very easy to take a picture of your own hand when using the shutter button (as opposed to saying "OK Glass"); and the lens is not that great—at least not in comparison with the current generation of smartphones. But, as I wrote in my recent feature for The Verge, optical quality is not nearly as important as it once was. The fact is that any negatives with using Glass are outweighed by the positive.

In early September 2013, I flew to San Francisco for a 12 day commercial shoot and decided to use the trip as an opportunity to shoot a complete portfolio of images using Google Glass. To make it even more of a "Googly" experience, I also decided to use Google Photos to process and grade all of the images. The only processing work I did outside of the Chrome browser was sizing (and occasionally straightening) the image.

I think Google still have a long way to go with Glass, but there's clearly a wealth of photographic and video possibilities — and hopefully the equipment will get even better. It's just going to take a lot more practice to use.

Photography & retouching (using Google Photos): James Bareham