Note: I originally started accumulating these notes some years ago, and eventually decided to write a blog piece about it. It got too long, and I abandoned it at the time. However, my friend Martin prompted me to dig this out so I’ve posted it here. If you find any errors — or if you have suggestions for better ways of doing things — please let me know!
What and why?
Location scouting is a term that is generally seen as coming from the movie industry. A director who needs to film some scenes outside on location may need to find the best place to stage the action. They may send out someone to scout out suitable locations and obtain the relevant permissions to film.
As photographers, we don't (usually) need to obtain permissions for most non-commercial outdoor shoots, unless we want access to private property or other restricted locations. Correspondingly I won't deal with that aspect here.
But finding locations to shoot when you are outdoors is of general importance. It is not just for landscape photography: portrait photographers might want to put their subject in a location for an environmental portrait; wildlife has particular habitats and so on.
Classically, before going out in person, finding locations would involve using Ordnance Survey Maps (here in the UK), a compass and a guidebook (perhaps a Wainwright or Lonely Planet guide) or two. These are still part of it, and work better than ever before. I'll mention this further below, but the Ordnance Survey has an excellent app for smartphones too.
Recent guides, such as "Photographing East Anglia" by Justin Minns come with GPS coordinates for your car's SatNav as well. https://www.justinminns.co.uk/books/photographing-east-anglia. Others in the series are published by Fotovue https://www.fotovue.com/ .
We are now in an age where the multiplicity of online resources can aid location scouting to the point that you can plan a trip with more certainty than ever before.
It is very popular to search Google, Flickr, 500px or Instagram for images of where you are going. Many outdoor photographers have inspirational images on their websites, and you can often work out where the shots were taken from.
On the other hand, please do remember this is about finding inspiration for places to go to make your own personal images, rather than just reproducing someone else's: you don't want to end up on Insta-repeat :) https://www.instagram.com/insta_repeat/
The list of resources below is NOT meant to be exhaustive (it can't be), but merely to show some tools I use. Some of the tools can be used for international travel: however, most are UK-specific, and, for simplicity, I have not attempted to generalise this for international purposes. It is also a bit iPhone-centric because that is what I use at present.
Mapping
Google maps: https://www.google.co.uk/maps For me, this has the best generally-available street view and satellite views
Bing maps: https://www.bing.com/maps In addition to street view and satellite view, here in the UK, Bing maps give access to Ordnance Survey maps. Comparing the OS map with the satellite view is extremely powerful.
The Ordnance Survey has an excellent map app. https://shop.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/apps/os-maps-subscriptions/
This is a subscription service, but hugely useful. You can download maps in advance of travelling, so if there is no phone signal they are still available. It will display your current location on the map as you go along.
When preparing for a trip at home, you may find it useful to have both Google Maps and Bing Maps open in separate tabs of your web browser to compare details. At the time of writing Google tends to have the best street view, so using this together with OS Maps on Bing is very helpful. The satellite images on each are usually taken at different times, so things like the height of tides may vary between them, meaning that some details may differ.
GPS coordinates Use Google Maps and Big Maps to obtain GPS coordinates of locations. Right-click on the location of interest, and in the pop-up menu you'll find GPS coordinates that can be copied to the clipboard. You can put these directly into your SatNav and they will get you to within about 10 metres of the location. On the OS Map app, you can highlight a position on the map, and send the location to your phone, Google maps etc.
By default, Google Maps gives GPS coordinates in decimal notation, which most car SatNavs accept. If you have a car SatNav that requires Deg-Min-Sec notation paste the decimal-format coordinates into the search bar on Google Maps and the D-M-S coordinates will be returned in a panel on the resulting screen.
Apple Car Play and Android Auto If you are using an iPhone through Apple Car Play as your SatNav, a dropped pin on Apple Maps on e.g. your iPad should sync straight across. Clicking on the pin should activate directions. Similarly, using Google my maps https://www.google.com/maps/d/ you can set up a map with dropped pins saved on it.
GridReferenceFinder.com If you'll be using an OS paper map when you get to your location, you can convert GPS coordinates to OS references at e.g. Grid References Finder https://gridreferencefinder.com/
Parking
Parkopedia can help you find parking and tell you which parking payment app you’ll need. https://www.parkopedia.com/
Toilets
The UK Toilet Map can be a lifesaver :) https://www.uktoiletmap.org/
You can also type “Toilet near me” into Google maps on your phone while out and about.
Finding GPS–tagged images
Aside from simply looking at Google images or Instagram, you can obtain useful information from GPS tags on images from the area you are going to visit.
Shot hotspot https://www.shothotspot.com/ You can search its map to find GPS-tagged pictures available on sites such as Flickr.
You can search the Flickr map directly https://www.flickr.com/map
Locationscout.net https://www.locationscout.net/ GPS-tagged photos with additional details such as travel, timing and how crowded (login required)
Saving lists and notes of locations
As an alternative to saving dropped pins for locations on e.g. Google maps (see above), I prefer to set up my own list of sites for photography with their GPS coordinates in advance of setting off. I find this easy to manage and update. I keep these lists on a cloud service so that it syncs between all my devices. Mine is on iCloud, but anything that syncs between your desktop/laptop/tablet/phone is fine - Dropbox, OneDrive etc. For simplicity, I keep them as plain text files and edit them in BBEdit. https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/
The entries are minimal and tend to look like this:
Grain Battery Tower51°27'05.4"N 0°43'52.1"E51.451502, 0.731129
Park at 51°27'12.0"N 0°43'10.0"E51.453333, 0.719444There are apps for doing this too, for example, MapAPic Locations Scout LE https://www.mapapic.com/ will let you save a location’s details and link to driving directions.
Apps for predicting how natural light will fall
Outdoor photography of any type relies on the way light falls from the sun or moon. Planning a visit to a site is helped enormously by predictions of the direction and height of the sun/moon, sun and moon rise and set, golden and blue hours etc. Astrophotographers may also need the location of the Milky Way and meteor showers. Two amazing apps will help.
Photographer’s ephemeris. https://photoephemeris.com/en (IOS and desktop, paid app for full function)
Photopills. https://www.photopills.com/ adds augmented reality views for visualisation, extra basic photography information (e.g. filter factors and depth of field/hyperfocal tables) and further astro data. (IOS and Android, paid app for full function)
Dedicated astro-photographers will also want an astronomy app: Stellarium “a free open source planetarium for your computer” https://stellarium.org/ is excellent and is updated to show transient features such as comets as they appear. (IOS and Android, desktop)
Weather forecasts
There are endless sites for this, but for simplicity, I tend to use BBC weather in the UK https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather (IOS and Android, desktop, free) and the Met Office predictions https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/ (IOS and Android, desktop, free).
Windy https://www.windy.com/ Global visualisations for weather (wind, rain, cloud etc) waves and so on. (IOS and Android, desktop)
Weather radar for current rainfall Netweather https://www.netweather.tv/live-weather/radar (Desktop) Weather and radar app https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/weather-radar/id545993260 (IOS)
Tidal predictions
If you are going to the coast or a tidal river (e.g. the Thames as far up as Teddington Weir), you'll want to know the state of the tide.
BBC tides https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/coast-and-sea/tide-tables gives 7-day predictions around the UK coast, including high and low tides and tide heights.
Tides near me https://tidesnear.me/ 7-day predictions from tidal stations around the world, and sun and moon rise and set times.(IOS and Android Apps, free)
Nautide If you want more than simple tide times, Nautide adds wave and surf predictions, tidal coefficients, weather/wind/barometer and sun/moon data. Paid extension packs will activate the calendar and extend tidal predictions beyond 7 days. https://nautide.com/ (IOS and Android)
PLA tide tables. The Port of London Authority makes annual tide tables for its area available free from its website.
http://www.pla.co.uk/Safety/Tide-Tables They cover as far out as Margate in north Kent and Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex. See also the PLA's Tidal Thames app. https://www.pla.co.uk/Media-Centre/PLA-Tidal-Thames-app
There is also this list of apps for tide table charts https://elixrapp.com/apps-for-tide-table-charts/
EXIF-tagged images
EXIF data (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exif ) is retained in some images on Flickr and 500px. You can use this to get an idea of which lenses will be useful for particular types of pictures at any location. This can help with choosing which lenses to take with you, especially on international flights where your carry-on luggage is limited.
Finding angles of view for lens selection
Protractor extension in Chrome Suppose you identify a particular view on, say, Google maps using the Chrome browser, it can be useful to see what angle of view it will take up from your chosen vantage point. You can use the Protractor extension to identify the angle of view from that vantage point: the angle of view can tell you which lens you need to cover the view. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/protractor/kpjldaeddnfokhmgdlmpdlecmobaonnj?hl=en (NB - in principle, this is affected by the curvature of the Earth, but for normal line-of-sight views, it should be close enough.)
A table of lens angle of view is available from Nikonians or Wikipedia.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_view#Common_lens_angles_of_view
If you want to work out a focal length you might need for a vertical object from a vantage point, you can measure the distance to it on either Google maps or Bing maps. Wikipedia, for instance, might be able to tell you the height of e.g. a skyscraper. This gives you two sides of a triangle, from which you can work out the angle of view using simple trigonometry. A trigonometry solver is available at http://cossincalc.com/ .
Recording locations from location scouting in person
It is often useful to go location scouting on foot or in the car, unencumbered by heavy gear, carrying little more than your phone.
Any reasonably recent smartphone should be able to record a GPX track. This is a trail of GPS coordinates you can use to review exactly where you have been. I have been using the Trails app http://trails.io/en/ on my iPhone, for several years; note though that the app developer does not seem to have provided details of the privacy policy. [IOS] Alternatives are available both on IOS and Android.
I export the GPX trail to my iCloud files. These can then be read into Google maps: see https://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/how-to-add-gpx-files-to-google-maps/ for how to do this.
The OS Maps app also records GPX trails and can display them on the OS map itself. Works really well.
Your phone's camera should be able to record GPS locations which are embedded in the picture's metadata: you can visualise back home using the Photos app on Mac OSX or IOS on a map (right-click on the image to see it on a map). See also https://www.alphr.com/view-metadata-photo/ .
For extracting the GPS coordinates from a picture taken on my phone, I export the unmodified original from the Photos app on my Mac to a suitable location (e.g. the Desktop). I then use Exiftool https://exiftool.org/ to extract the coordinates.
Typically these then go into my plain text files of GPS locations (see above — Saving lists and notes of locations).
Aviation scouting
If you are planning on hanging out on the fence-line somewhere, it is worth looking at the available maps for both civilian and military airfields. These will often show the kinds of shots that can be obtained from different angles and what focal length lenses are needed. NB: aircraft take off and land into the wind (by and large) so plan accordingly.
Thunder and Lightnings military airfield guides
https://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co.uk/spotting/index.php
SpottersWiki for civilian airports https://www.spotterswiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
Anthony Baines.
Last updated 2023-02-16