Google Earth Adds Kite View Photos To Its Collection [GoogleEarth]

Frank Taylor is sailing worldwide, using a kite to take aerial photographs of the places he visits. In many cases, his photos are better than the ones in Google Earth. So Google’s replacing their old ones with Frank’s.

Frank’s in the middle of a five year trip all over the world on the Tahina Expedition, an adventure he’s taking together with his wife and of which Google is a partner (Frank runs the unofficial Google Earth Blog ). In May, the expedition stopped on Manihi Atoll in French Polynesia, where Frank used his kite camera to capture shots of a village near the lagoon where they landed. Google recently added those images to Google Earth and Google Maps.

And while Frank’s undoubtedly thrilled that his work is improving Google Earth piece by piece, he says probably the most memorable element of the shoot is meeting the folk who lived inside the village he photographed:

The best element of this photo shoot was the opportunity it gave us to satisfy people within the village. We started by parking our dinghy near Fernando’s house. Fernando is the man who helps sailors visiting the island have a truly unique experience in Manihi. He may be the leader of the Mormon church at the island, and runs his own pearl farm. Fernando is a brilliant guy and genuinely wants all sailors to have a terrific visit to Manihi. He let us mounted our gear on a table outside his house and even made us some snacks and drinks as we described our plan.

As soon as we installation the kite, people – especially the youngsters – started walking up to ask what we were doing. Besides the fact that we didn’t speak their language really well, they soon grasped the concept that. The teenagers all wanted their photo taken, and were particularly excited once I asked them to assist pull the string after we were retrieving the kite after our flights.

For more about Taylor’s travels, look at his excellent work at the Google Earth Blog . [ Tahina Expedition via Google Earth Blog ]

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This post is tagged: aerial photographs, brilliant guy, french polynesia, Google Earth, mormon church, partner frank