A topographic map and compass should be considered two critical elements of every outdoor photographer’s gear bag.

Consider it a treasure hunt. Your topo map is loaded with clues for finding hidden peaks, summits, cliffs, secret ponds, waterfalls, meadows, prairies, and much more.

Instead of wandering aimlessly in the wilderness- use a topographic map to plan when and where you are going to shoot next! You’ll save valuable time and shoot more creative images than everyone else on the beaten path…

North Carolina has great annual displays of wild flowers. A Topo map and a gps is a great way to relocate the best locations year after year for fantastic photos.

There’s really no substitute for scouting an area in advance, but using 3-D Views to visualize a scene from one or more possible locations is a reasonable substitute, especially if the location is hundreds of miles away and your visits are infrequent. You need to be careful when using map level 5, though, because some distant features may not show up. One good use of this feature is estimating lighting on a particular feature, such as “When, if ever, will there be alpenglow on Mt. XXX at sunrise?”

The calculation features can be very useful when planning a shot that inlcudes the Sun or Moon. The simplest and most obvious use here is the compass tool: draw a line in the direction the Sun or Moon will rise or set to get an idea of where this will appear in the scene. The azimuth is only part of the answer, though; a lot of scenes (especially for folks in Colorado) don’t have the ocean for a horizon. The elevation profile is of some help in determining the altitude of a feature, though having a built-in “line-of-sight” tool would make this a lot easier. The ability to include the effects of curvature and refraction would also help, but admittedly, this isn’t a big factor in most scenes.

In most cases, I find it eaiser to export lat/lon/elevation data from points I have selected on the map and use that information to calculate azimuth/altitude/distance from a potential camera location to features of interest. It’s a bit tedious, but it need only be done once; thereafter, values from any arbitrary location can be calculated very quickly. I use the NGS (that’s National Geodetic Survey in this context …) code, but fairly good results can be had assuming a spherical Earth, or in some cases, even a flat Earth. This technique also works in cities, but you obviously need to account for the heights of buildings. Fortunately, the heights of major buildings in many cities are easily obtained from the web.

One could, of course, actually measure these values, but doing so would require a visit to every location. And to get usable accuracy, a theodolite with astronomical observations would probably be needed. In contrast, using measurements on the map and calculations from exported data, the information can be had to very good accuracy within a few seconds. I’ll leave people to guess which approach I prefer ...

A couple of caveats, though—in some cases, the registration between the map raster and the DEM isn’t quite perfect. When the location is near a cliff (e.g., Yosemite’s Glacier Point), the elevation error can be significant. In cases like that, I tend to trust the maps contour lines; I’d be interested in hearing how others approach this. When working at close distances (such as in a city), small errors in feature coordinates can result in huge errors in calculated azimuths and altitudes, so it’s important to be as careful as you can.

I do a lot of shooting in the salt marshes along the Texas coast, with an emphasis on the GLO cabins in various states of repair or disrepair.

One of the essential tools for me are satellite photos – often I’ll scan them for small areas of odd color change along/in the marshes – these often indicate the presence of some man-made element. I’ll mark these spots on my GPS and then go out and paddle to them.

Another way I use them is that I’ll find something I can barely see in a marsh, that looks man-made, but can’t find a reasonable route through the marsh to them. I’ll mark the spot and then later examine satellite photos for possible routes. I don’t make exact routes, as the resources I’ve used thus far for satellite photos (primarily google earth) have poor GPS encoding – often off by up to 1/4 mile. But, it gives me a good idea of what channels I may encounter and where I might want to turn and when. Mind you, it’s had me portaging through muck many a time (In a few cases, even having to do the old “mud slide paddle”—laying on my belly on the ‘yak and using both halves of my paddle to slowly push me forward.) – but it can mean the difference between frustratingly going in circles and getting that great shot.

I can’t wait to get them both in one place now =)

!c