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Location Scouting: Google Earth
November 19th, 2008
In January I’ll be in several new locations as I fly around the world. The most time I will have in any one place will be 5 days, six nights. In short, I’ll be very pressed for time to shoot the locations I’ll be in. Never been to Hanoi? Where do you start to become familiar with the place? Lonely Planet? Sure. An image search on Google? Also good. But last week I discovered Google Earth and my pre-trip location-scouting will never be the same.
It’s not that I didn’t know about Google Earth, just didn’t bother to really dig around. But last week while I was doing some digging around in prep for the trip I uploaded Google Earth to my iPod Touch and played with it. It’s one thing to look at a map of, say, Hanoi. It’s another entirely to see it in colour satelite photographs, to see the river, see where the boats are, get a sense of scale and begin to literally map out a plan. I only played with it an hour but can see myself spending time in airport lounges poking around the back alleys and plazas of the places I am about to fly to, making final scouting decisions based on what I see with my eyes and not just the lines of a map.
If you’ve never played with Google Earth, you can download it to your computer, as well as get an iPod/iPhone app. Check it out HERE. The site isn’t sexy – it’s actually pretty uninspiring, but once you get moving around a new country or city on your iPod or iPhone, you’ll be in love.
Any other great location scouting tips, other than actually going there, which is the best scouting of all – feel free to leave a comment. Scouting, if photographers do it at all, can be the key to a successful shoot or a total, unmitigated, should-have-stayed-at-home waste of time.
Its a great application. Now all you need to do is add GPS tracking to your images and we can all come along!
I find I have the most success by having an adventurous local with me. They may not know what is best photographically, but they’ll know where people tend to congregate or where popular places are. Along with some good preparation and flexibility to go off the plan, it creates some great photographic opportunities.
Google earth is fantastic!!!!
Well, I’d been relying in the Internet as the main method of scouting a place for quite a few years already.
Google, the search engine, itself in fact is a very powerful tool. I remember my trip to Milpitas, CA in 2000. I, effordlessly, able to pinpoint exactly where I’ll be working and then choose a suitable hotel (with suitable restaurant – I’m a muslim) within an hour.
We’ve found our house on google earth. That was fun.
I think it’s pretty cool is a very good tool. It might also be good to couple it with
http://www.panoramio.com/
which does allow geo tags and has some photos not all are great but you get an idea of the area and possible areas of interest.
Thanks for sharing.
You may use JotPix.com, post a request, and have local people take photos/videos of the places that you are planning to visit.