Mystery Friday (Part III)

Posted on 06/03/2011 by Jordan Justice in Mystery Monday

Today, I’m bringing another tool to you guys that we use when hunting down the location of photos.

This one is awesome! I’m so excited to show you and then enable you to use it.

The biggest part of my job is working with our GIS software that my colleague, Kevin Marsh developed. You can read more about GIS in another post I wrote a while ago here.

As I trace the flight paths from the old flight maps, they are stored on our server, and linked to the corresponding roll. Using GIS software, we can then export the flight paths to a .kml file, and view them in Google Earth.

So how does this help in the photo search? The amazing thing about Google Earth is that it lets you fly anywhere to view detailed satellite imagery, maps, and terrain. As you can see in the photo below, this is much more helpful than the old county maps I showed you in the last post.

Ready for the best part? You can also click the flight path which will then open the roll’s webpage inside of Google Earth. This allows me to search for other images on the roll, helping me narrow down the exact location for the mystery photo.

And today, we’re proud to be able to give you this same ability. You’ll need to download Google Earth, and also our .kml file of all the flight paths we’ve finished. So, lets use this technology together to uncover something historic.

Visitor Comments

What an interesting adventure! Thank you for letting us in on your system. It has been fun.

But sadly, no match to the photo. Actually I looked for some of the other houses in the roll and to tell the truth, I couldn't find any of them. I think this roll got put into the wrong location somehow. It has been fun, but I just can't think of another thing to do. The mystery will have to stay unsolved for now.

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