Meike Nixdorf’s stunning mountainscapes landscapes look like vintage postcards. But she made them with the latest technology: Google Earth.

Nixdorf's been fascinated with topography and Google Earth since using it to scout a video project two years ago. She took a screenshot of New Zealand's Mount Taranaki and marveled at the colors and textures of the stratovolcano. "There was something about this image that I connected to," she says. "It was the way the mountain felt like someone had just built it out of modeling clay."

That sent her down the path of collecting images that caught her eye and she felt "visualized a sense of movement and change." Some are screenshots of popular destinations like the Alps, the Cascade Range, and the Himalayas. Others are lesser known sites she found visually interesting. Nixdorf was particular about the landscapes she chose for Your Earth Transforms, and she'd carefully circle around them as if flying, looking for the most striking perspective. Not every shot worked out, though; some were rejected because the resolution wasn't high enough. She didn’t want to make it obvious that she was using rendered satellite imagery. And despite having literally endless images to choose from, she was highly selective. "I believe it comes from being used to shooting with film, you think twice before you take a shot and waste a frame of film," she says.

Nixdorf worked with retoucher Grit Hackenberg to give the final images their dreamy colors and intense textures. They spent hours in Photoshop, color testing, layering and manipulating the photos to execute Nixdorf's vision of making screenshots into something beautiful. "I like it when the viewer thinks this is a real photograph and only gets the idea of a rendered image at a second glance," she says.

Given enough time and money, Nixdorf could have travelled to these locations, but the results wouldn't have been the same. Using Google Earth and manipulating the images give her greater control over the process so she could make exactly the image she wanted. Nixdorf explains her concept as follows. "The project Your Earth Transforms questions our perception of change," she writes. "With this project I am aiming at making visible how sensitive our earth's crust is even though it mostly appears as solid rock. And how it is affected by constant movement and change even though these transformations are mainly invisible."1

UPDATE 12:57 EST 09/11/15: This article was updated to include Meike Nixdorf's concept.