Chance Landscapes exist because I wanted to learn more about responsive design websites. The best way to learn tools is to use them to solve real problems. So the problems I created for myself were driven by the design concept of this site: present live webcam captures of landscapes across the United States, provide some simple controls, and make it scale from phones, to tablets, to full desktop displays.

Simple idea, simple site, but there are always technical complexities. The responsiveness is built on Bootstrap, but was adapted to modify its default capabilities. For example, the menu bar changes from vertical on most screen sizes to horizontal on phones - not a native Bootstrap function. Hammer.js provided the swipe left/right touch events. CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery added the style and functionality. I also made use of HTML5 Canvas to create a unique header on each page-load. A chance banner, if you will.

The images are an eclectic mix of landscapes I find interesting for a variety of reasons. Some I've been to, others I'd like to visit one day, and more will be added. They are not all postcard scenery with perfect composition. The ones from state departments of transportation certainly aren't, but I think they have an appeal of their own. All efforts were made to ensure the images are in the public domain, primarily from government sources. The informational blurbs about the images are my own, and include attribution and links to their source sites.

I could have picked any idea for the site, why Chance Landscapes? When you take a scenic snapshot on vacation, it captures the place - nature - at that moment. That's powerful, that's the point in time of your experience. But the landscape existed before you were there, and it exists after. We know this logically, but we don't see it. In some small way, maybe a deeper connection to the place can be created by visiting it repeatedly, over time, even if virtually. And perhaps places we haven't visited in person will take on greater meaning when we finally do step into their landscapes after living with their changing images online. I don't know. This is as much an art project as it is a technical one.