Back in October I conducted my first test runs with a kite aerial photography rig I purchased for our five-year sailing trip (see TahinaExpedition.com). Thanks to a partnership with Google, some of the imagery should find its way into Google Earth and Maps aerial imagery.
Today, I’m proud to announce that the first set of images are now available! You can see the marina where we kept Tahina in the months preceding our recent departure (Joyner Marina in Carolina Beach, NC) with photos taken in early October by me with a camera hanging from a kite string:
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The catamaran in the lower left is our boat Tahina. You can zoom in pretty far on this imagery since it was taken from about 300 feet altitude.
In order to get it stitched together, I had some fantastic help from Stewart Long of GonzoEarth who did a fantastic job of processing my jumble of kite images into one cohesive geo-corrected image. Then Google processed it further for inclusion in their database. If you look closely, at the bottom it says “Tahina Expedition” for the image credit! A big “thank you” to both Stewart and Google for helping out!
This isn’t the first time I’ve had aerial imagery included in Google Earth. Read this story of how I arranged to take a same-day aerial photo that got put in Google Earth. And, if you search for “TTA” in Google Earth (or the Sanford Airport in North Carolina), you’ll see the imagery there was taken by Gearthblog. That was my airport where I used to keep my airplane.
Also, check out the cool 360 panorama I did of Tahina in the same marina (which can also be viewed in Google Earth).
Very very cool. I’d heard of balloons capturing high-rez Earth imagery from low altitudes, but the kite craze is new to me. This seems like a very efficient way to skirt govt satellite imagery resolution limits. Can’t wait for Google Kite View (soon to be followed by Google Drone View and MUAV View) and the inevitable privacy backlash!