Learn about the tools that I use to navigate to great locations!

I spent the past months hunting for places to photograph in California and then writing about it. California is famous for its photographic icons such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Yosemite or Death Valley but it has so much more to offer to photographers. Not many of you may know about the alien Tifoni formations of Salt Point State Park, the Sea Otters of Moss Landing or the gushing Whiskeytown Falls.

Read about the free or inexpensive tools I use to plot my way to these photo spots.

Topographic Maps

Topographic maps are indispensable to find places and to pre-visualize photo locations. Topographic maps are two-dimensional representations of the three dimensional landscapes. Contour lines connect points of equal elevation. With a bit of training, you can learn to distinguish canyons, valleys, mountains, ridges or gentle slopes. When you plot your trek, you can find out how steep it will be and where to go to photograph great scenery.

How to read Topographic Maps

Elevation Lines, and Landscape features

On this map, you can see a bold elevation line marked 6200 feet. If a trail would follow this exact line, it would be completely level.

You can also see a bold line marked 6600 feet. This means the bold line between 6200ft and 6600ft marks 6400ft of elevation (I have added the red markers for your convenience) and that each of the thinner lines adds another 40 feet. Keep following the 6400ft line to the round peak and you can see that the brown line around the top also must be 6600. Ergo this map shows a peak on its lower right. The trail zigzags uphill from the bottom right to the top right, as the elevation rises from below 6200ft to above 6400ft.

Steepness and direction of landscape features

The density of the lines correlates to the steepness of the terrain. This is easy to imagine, as the elevation gain per distance is much larger.

This map of Yosemite Valley and El Capitan illustrates this point. The steep cliff forces the lines of equal elevation to cluster very densely. We can see the elevation at the valley floor is 4000 feet and at the top of El Capitan is 7569 feet. Now you know which direction the cliff drops.

Here is how this looks in real life. Compare the picture to the map! Imagine standing to the bottom right of the cliff, just outside of the map.

Using topographic maps, you can pre-visualize how places look. With some practice, you will see the canyons or mountains. You can even find out which angle the sun or moon need to shine to light the subject just the way you want. Combined with the software Heavenly Opportunity, you can find out when the stars will align for you.

Outdoor mapping with your GPS

I use a Garmin Venture HC handheld GPS for mapping while I am outside. It is inexpensive, has a color display and sufficient memory to hold topographic maps covering a large area. Its GPS receiver is accurate even underneath a dense forest canopy.

Topographic maps are wonderful for planning but they are even more important for navigating while you are out hiking or while you are on an off-road drive. Imagine heading for a cliff and not knowing about it or without finding a way around it. The maps will tell you where you can safely go. I always pre-load my GPS receiver with topographic maps just for these cases; especially since things never fully go according to plan.

Free topographic maps for Garmin GPS

Garmin topographic maps are expensive, but I found a place that has free maps for your Mapsource software. Mapsource is the mapping software that comes with your Garmin GPS. Mapsource is your control center. You use it to communicate with your GPS device, upload maps and waypoints and to download your track logs. The base map that comes with Mapsource is worthless for outdoor explorers.

You can download free maps here:

GPS File Depot

This website has many free topographic maps for the United States and even some other countries. The website also contains tutorials, showing you how to create your own maps from publicly available USGS (US Geological Survey) data.

Free Global Mapper and Terraserver

If you do not have a GPS receiver or if you are looking for a viewer for the USGS maps directly, I recommend the Global Mapper Software (dlgv32). The software directly interfaces with Terraserver, where it can download topographic maps of the entire United States for free.

The feature-rich software is not very intuitive. I have used it to generate waypoint plots of my travels for documentation and to generate most of the pictures on this page. You can also use it to plan your trips.

Since the USGS maps are available everywhere in the United States at 24k resolution, you should check out this software.

My iPhone and Terraserver

As a backup to my GPS and for on-the go planning I use Topo Maps on my iPhone. Although the iPhone GPS is subpar when compared to my Garmin, its large bright display, the free maps and the cheap software that can download maps on demand make it a good solution, too. The software is very intuitive and downloads are fast (on WiFi). The maps are small enough to download via 3G without AT&T restrictions.

You can measure distances and find your position on the map, but you cannot search for Points of Interest and you cannot route, since the maps are just raster graphics (Garmin maps are vector based).

I recommend that you get an extended battery shoe or auxiliary charger for your iPhone, since the GPS receiver is very power hungry. I have an iGo charger that I can operate with AA batteries to juice up the phone while I am in the field. It is a bit flimsy but it gets the job done.

Google Earth and Panoramio

I also like picture peeping from home with Google Maps. I wrote an article about Google Maps for Photographers a while back. Turning on the Panoramio (under Geographic Web) puts little blue markers on the maps. Click a marker and a photograph appears. You can get a sense of a place and maybe estimate its photographic potential from these photos.

Also nice is the sun feature that lets you see which areas are lit when, which is useful when you hike in a canyon where it gets dark sooner.

Books

I own most travel guides by DK and Lonely Planet, but I also own a large number of specialist guides that help me pick the right place for photography. Here are some of the books I use to find my way around.

Photo Travel Books for California

• PhotoSecrets San Francisco
• PhotoSecrets San Diego
• The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite
• The photographer’s guide to the California Coast
• The photographer’s guide to Death Valley
• The photographer’s guide to Yosemite & the High Sierra

California Backroads

• Backcountry Adventures Northern California
• Backroads of the California Wine Country

Regional Travel in California

• California’s Eastern Sierra – A Visitor’s Guide
• Experience the California Coast

Other States

• Photographing the Southwest – Volume1 – A guide to the natural landmarks of Southern Utah
• Photographing the Southwest – Volume2 – A guide to the natural landmarks of Arizona
• Photographing the Southwest – Volume3 – A guide to the natural landmarks of Colorado & New Mexico

My website

Recently I spent a lot of time writing about photo locations in California on my website: California Photo Scout. Read details about photo locations to well known and little known places on this site. The database is growing every week.

I did not find all the places through extensive research. I discovered some of them by luck, too. Take a detour and stray from the predictable path to discover new places!

This is exactly how we discovered the Town of Locke by coincidence.

Timing often plays a critical role too as our recent visit to McGee Canyon proofed. While trees at most places in the area were either still green or already lost most leafs, McGee Canyon was just perfect.

In the end, everything will depend on your tenacity. By researching properly, you can improve your odds, but you still need to do a lot of legwork.