Satellite Photos

[NancyP]

In one of the other threads, someone mentioned using Google Earth to download satellite pictures to use as part of the decorations. Someone else mentioned using a satellite photo of their church on the invitations or something. Anyway, I had never heard of Google Earth, so I downloaded it and tried using it. The satellite photos of my town are from so high up that you can't tell my church as anything distinctive - the photo really shows the streets better than any landmarks. So I tried zooming in. Unfortunately, while the church got bigger, it also got blurry so that all you can see is this big white blob. It certainly wouldn't work as part of decorations or anything.

Am I doing something wrong? Do I need to pay to download one of the upgraded versions in order to be able to zoom in closer so that you can actually tell it's a church - let alone our church?

It sounded like such a neat idea to use satellite photos in place of the cartoons in the decorations, but what I'm getting won't work for anything. I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to get better pictures. Thanks!

[houseparent]

Your probably not doing anything wrong. Some areas of the country don't have the high resolution images. Our hometown in Scobey, Montana is very blurry. Our new hometown in Columbus, Mississippi is clear.

Usually the more populated the area, the higher the resolution of the images.

[KarenF]

I found that some areas are clearer than others. You might try searching somewhere else for photos besides Google Earth. Our town is very clear down to even being able to see that our fence was laid out crooked :eek: , but I am unable to see my sister's house clearly in the city where she lives.
My husband says it is either because of the position of the satellite or the level of (terrorist) security risk of an area. I'm not sure about either, but the security risk thing seems plausible because the factory where he works (high chemical risk) less than 20 miles away is blurry.

Keep looking. You might try areas the kids are familiar with-amusement parks, baseball diamonds, etc. and see if that works.

[TrinityJen]

Are you allowing enough time for the pictures to load in? It may take a little time for each section to load. OR you might be in a higher security area. You can't focus in as close in all areas. In Google Maps there is also the option of seeing you map at a satellite image or a combination map and satellite image. You could try that online to see if you get anything different.

Wanna see my church? It doesn't have allot of detail, but I think I will use it as a background.

[houseparent]

Here is a picture of our church, but the satellite image is over a year old because our parking lot is paved now.

It is a pretty clear image.

[stephsmith]

Our church is pretty clear, however, go across town to my house and its blurry. It just depends. If you are looking for some beautiful pictures of space and earth images, you can go to nasa's website. They have an image exchange in which the pictures are free for regular use. They are beautiful. I am going to print many of them out as 8x10s and put them on scrapbooking card stock 12x12 to hang up around the sanctuary and other places. I did this last year with beautiful island pictures and it looked really nice.
Good Luck
Stephanie

[houseparent]

The latest version of Google Earth has some excellent satellite pictures. I got some really good images of places like: The Eiffel Tower, The Grand Canyon, Atlanta Motor Speedway, and our Church Building to use for Earth Cams.

I used my own graphics software to turn the pictures into earth cams, but you could just as easily print the images on full sheet labels and stick them over the images from the clip art CD

I highly recommend downloading Google Earth

[lighthousecog]

MSN also has satellite pictures. This is their web address,
www. Maps.Live.com. When you find your location view it as street level. I hope this helps.

[J2911]

I love the idea of replacing the clip art pictures with our own satellite pictures.