Spin a Camera Photos with Google Maps

Candy Glass Productions has created a nice video explaining how you can make an animated movie from photographs taken in a radius around a building.



In their instructions Candy Glass Productions advise you to import a screenshot from Google Maps into Photoshop, and then draw a radius around your selected building. An alternative could be to use the Google Maps API. Esa's Google Maps API Examples has this handy Radius Drawing Tool that can be used to create a circle around a building on Google Maps.



The advantage of using Esa's radial tool is that you can adjust the radius directly on the map. This allows you to adjust the radius to find the distance from your building that provides the most vantage points for capturing the still photos of your chosen building.

If you want to find the best times for taking your photographs then you can use the Golden Hour Calculator. This Google Maps application displays sunrise and sunset times, the elevation and azimuth of the sun and shows users when the golden hour occurs for any location. The Golden Hour Calculator defines the 'golden hour' as "the first and last hour of sunlight in the day when the special quality of light yields particularly beautiful photographs".

Another great Google Maps based application for photographers is the The Photographer's Ephemeris. This tool helps photographers see how light will fall on the land, day or night, for any location on earth.