Dragging the figure icon partially onto the map will reveal areas with street view available. The smaller control beneath allows you to move the camera to north, south, east and west. The latter is very useful for looking at terrain and building positions. The top icon allows you to change your directional bearing, rotation and angle of view. The top left features the navigation controls. Some useful additions here are the Sun Position Tool, Ruler and Save Image. The left side of the interface has many of the overlays you can add.Īt the top of the screen is a toolbar with icons. You might need to be selective about what you have switched on. Having too many layers enabled can be challenging for less capable computers. Some of the most useful among these are Borders and Labels, Places, Photos and 3D Buildings. Layers allows you to toggle numerous different information layers. Places allows you to save specific locations into My Places as well as have a history of your searches. The left side of the screen is taken up with the Search Bar, Places and Layers.

Let’s take a quick look at the Google Earth Pro interface. To get to a specific location, type it in the search bar (top left) and you will see a film-like animation as Google flies in towards your destination. Once installed and open, you will be presented with a zoomed out view of the Earth from space. You are looking for the Desktop app which is available in versions for Windows, Mac and Linux. Google Earth Pro is available from the Google’s dedicated Earth website. Google Earth Pro opens with a global view Introducing Google Earth Pro Until a couple of years ago, this product was a high-end and expensive, but now it’s available for non-commercial use, entirely free. There is however a Google Product that can provide us with a huge range of planning tools for our location based photography. However, it is often required to visit other pages and sites to accumulate all the information. Things like The Photographer’s Ephemeris 3D and Photo Pills are particularly useful, especially when on location.įor planning before the event, Google Maps has long been one of the default tools for organizing a photo shoot. For travel and landscape photographers, there is undoubtedly a plethora of planning tools available.

Google earth camera