Tuesday 23 June 2009

Panoramio

I've been using Panoramio to add a few pictures to Google Earth recently. They're not the best pictures ever taken, although some of them are OK, but it's strangely satisfying to put your old snaps in geographical context. Sometimes there are a few surprises - for example, when I stopped to take this picture of an old, presumably volcanic mountain in the Canaries, it was mainly because I was struck by what seemed to be its perfect cone shape. I was obviously looking somewhere else before we stopped and when we drove off again, as Google Earth shows that it's really a completely different shape, and only looks like a cone from a certain viewpoint.

The best thing about Panoramio is the way it groups your photos with ones others have taken in the same area. Sometimes I'm just impressed by the quality of the photos other people have taken, sometimes other people's photos bring back half-forgotten memories of scenes I saw but didn't snap, sometimes I find unexpected things which I hadn't noticed just round the corner from whatever I was photographing.

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