Panoramio: Explore the World

No matter where you live on this great planet or where you want to explore, you can probably find a photo of it (or pretty close to it) on Panoramio.com. If you think Google maps is cool, try Panoramio.com out for a run. Panoramio was started in eastern Spain by a small group of friends and was acquired by Google in 2007—as you can see the site is essentially built on the Google maps platform. There is indeed value in Google street view, but there is limited nature views or no real attention to detail in the images generated by the driving clone cars. Panoramio offers multiple angles of various landscapes, structures, architecture and landmarks which are uploaded by a growing crowd of amateur and professional photographers from around the globe.

Though we at Branchwhipped.com promote staying active by getting out there and exploring the great outdoors first hand, it won’t hurt to do a little recon on Panoramio before you leave to see if there are any views of particular interest you’ll not want to miss. Also when you return home to civilization, you can upload a few of your shots and plot them on the map for others to see and explore.

We’ll look for ways to integrate our adventures and outings into Panoramio so we can share them with you, so stay tuned. Has anybody uploaded any of their own shots on Panoramio or used it to check an area out before embarking on a trip? We’d love to hear your thoughts or experiences.