Author and Editor Questions and Answers

Paul Newby, Editor of The Photogrammetric Record 

How would you describe your discipline, and in what area do you specialise?
Photogrammetry is described as the art and science of obtaining reliable measurements by means of images. With a history stretching back over 150 years, today photogrammetry operates on the frontiers of geography, engineering and computer science (in the region now still somewhat unpopularly known as geomatics, from the French Canadian géomatique), with important links to computer vision, robotics and virtual reality. The most familiar and routine application of photogrammetry is to topographic mapping from aerial photographs. Other applications can range from archaeology to zoology, including, for example, cultural heritage recording and reconstruction, industrial plant measurement and monitoring, forensic investigations into accidents and crimes, and medicine, surgery and dentistry: in short, any discipline that finds a use for 3D non-contact measurements from photographs, video images or laser or radar scans. For myself, I am a drop-out from the Ordnance Survey (Great Britain’s national mapping organisation) where I worked in R&D and eventually spent four years as Manager of Photogrammetry and Survey Computations before taking early retirement in 1994 at the age of 49. Since then, among other activities around the fringes of surveying and mapping, I have worked as a technical translator, editor and occasional lecturer and am now trying in vain to retire properly.

Who was the teacher you admired the most? 
R. J. Chorley in Cambridge – his approach to the geomorphology of the spectacular landscapes of the south western United States could scarcely fail to enthral young students. I must also mention the brilliant E. H. Thompson at University College London (UCL) for his sensitivity to bright students’ needs and for his lucidity, which was so literally incredible that five minutes after the lecture many less well-endowed students could not believe they had even momentarily understood the complex point of three-dimensional image geometry which he had just explained.

Which research paper influenced you the most? 
Impossible to recall. Perhaps something on aerial triangulation, the technique of connecting the 2D geometry of individual air photographs into coherent strips and blocks and thereby enabling 3D measurement of the ground portrayed on them. This was still in its early days when the Directorate of Overseas Surveys, for which I had been working in Africa, sent me to study photogrammetry at UCL in 1972. 

Which piece of research do you wish you had been involved in? 
The original work on digital cartography at the Royal College of Art in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey in the mid to late 1960s – I was dimly aware of it when I graduated but nobody suggested that it was open to me. But life might then have been a great deal less interesting and satisfying than in my actual career (and family) path via Overseas Surveys, including meeting my wife and doing, with her, several lengthy stints in Africa, the West Indies and Indonesia. 

How do you see your subject area developing in the future? 
Integrating with mainstream computer science; continuing to provide an essential part of the national infrastructure despite continual carping criticisms of the fact that users actually have to pay for it; one day becoming considerably more automated: the tantalisingly difficult automation of “feature extraction”, that is the recognition and measurement of real-world objects on aerial or satellite photographs in order to update existing digital map data, is currently stalled and has been for some time.

How do you relax? 
Running over soft and preferably hilly ground, rather more slowly than I used to; mountaineering with a preference for big, easy, snowy peaks over the small, hard, craggy variety.

What book are you reading at the moment? 
Richard Askwith’s Feet in the Clouds – a tale of fell-running and obsession – a rare thing, for I do not normally read books about my sport, or anybody else’s. A travel book would be far more likely. But next up will be The Island at the Centre of the World by Russell Shorto, about Dutch Manhattan and the founding of New York – I am hoping to find some more public recognition of our family history which we know includes descent from the first Dutch couple to raise a family in New Netherland, from 1625 onwards (we eventually went west after several generations of farming where New York City now stands; my grandma came back east, but that is another story).

What would you be doing if you hadn’t entered this career path? 
Probably geology, or perhaps more happily glaciology. But, about the time that oil and gas were discovered off Great Yarmouth, the dons at Peterhouse, Cambridge, refused me admission for Natural Sciences on the uncharacteristically practical grounds that there would be no call for geologists in future, and instead made me the offer I couldn’t refuse, to pay me real money (there were still College Scholarships and “Exhibitions” in those days) to study Maths and Theoretical Physics. We discovered their dreadful mistake very quickly, and they very kindly allowed me to become a mathematical geographer instead.

Photograph – “Looking like a coalman” according to Mrs Newby – Paul Newby just back from a solo 4½ hour run up – and down – Mount Etna in 2001.

Kevin Cox, Author of Political Geography: Territory, State and Society

How would you describe your discipline, and in what area do you specialise?
I am a political geographer with particular interests in the urban and in South Africa. My approach to political geography derives from an understanding of human geography which is critical of the old divisions between the economic, the cultural and the like. For me, the central concept of human geography has always been the spatial but this is now being viewed in ways that are eroding the barriers between the different systematic fields and between systematic geography and regional geography. 

Who was the teacher you admired the most?
Dick Chorley was a huge influence on me as an undergraduate. It was through Dick that I acquired my early interest in quantitative methods. His enthusiasm for geography as a field of study was unlimited. He, along with Peter Haggett, showed me that geography could undergo radical transformation in so many different ways. He was also a wonderful mentor. 

Which research paper influenced you the most?
There are many of them and it is very hard to differentiate. David Harvey’s work has always been a great inspiration. His paper on urban form and the redistribution of real income greatly influenced my early work on the politics of urbanization and then later his chapter in the Gregory-Urry collection (Social Relations and Spatial Structures) on the geopolitics of capitalism. Torsten Hagerstrand’s work on the role of the spread of information in understanding geographic pattern was also influential. And I always read what Doreen Massey writes.

Which piece of research do you wish you had been involved in?
I have no regrets in this regard.

How do you see your subject area developing in the future?
I think that the systematic fields will lose some of their power as ways of dividing up the subject matter of geographer. I think that the same applies to old ways of thinking about the relation between regional and systematic geography. The critique of dualisms in geography has been very important to the development of the discipline. 

How do you relax?
Mountain walking; listening to a wide variety of music ranging from Max Bruch to Stan Getz, and playing my saxophone; and I always have a novel on the go. My favourite novel? Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale. All geographers should read it.

What book are you reading at the moment?
I have been checking out the new French Dictionnaire de la Géographie et de l’Espace des Sociétés. Edited by Jacques Levy and Michel Lussault, it is an eye-opener: testimony to the vigor of contemporary French human geography.

What would you be doing if you hadn’t entered this career path?
School teaching.