ST HELENA ON GOOGLE STREET VIEW

Kyle Williamson from Pennsylvania, USA, is currently on-Island taking photos of St Helena for the Google Street View Mapping Programme.

Google Street View is part of the larger Google Maps and Earth applications. Street View utilises camera equipment mounted to cars, bicycles, backpacks, boats and so on to obtain panoramic 360° images. These images provide a view to someone using the programme online, as if they were standing in the selected location and allow the viewer to look around within the image in all directions.

 Kyle said:

 “My hope is that providing Google Street View images to the world will help promote awareness and appreciation of St Helena by giving access, visually, to the unique culture, environment and architecture. The photos will enhance the Island’s presence on Google, and give people – who may like to visit and people who may never have the opportunity to visit – the chance to view and learn more about the Island.”

Kyle’s original intent is to photograph the road network on the Island utilising a camera mounted to a car. Upon completion of this, he plans to carry the camera to easily accessible historic, environmental, and scenic sights on the Island. Finally he hopes to photograph the Post Box Walks as an opportunity to share the wide variety of landscapes, natural and man-made heritage of St Helena.

Kyle is using a Samsung Gear360 camera provided by Google through their loan programme. While driving or walking, Kyle can take one image every eight seconds – these images are GPS tagged to the location where they have been taken. Kyle then processes all of the images on his iPhone before uploading them to Google.

Images of Sandy Bay Beach and High Knoll Fort can now be found on Google Street View.

Due to the large scale of this project, SURE and St Helena Tourism are working together to provide an internet solution to assist Kyle as much as possible whilst he is on-island. Kyle plans to continue this project when he gets back to the US where he will then also edit and link images together which will allow viewers to ‘drive’ along the roads of St Helena on their computer.

Kyle concluded:

“Panoramic/360° images are tremendous tools for providing interactive imagery for educational, historical and tourism websites as well as promoting businesses. I would be interested in continuing work on St Helena to promote the Island through more photography of this sort.

“Areas that I was unable to cover – because of time or technical difficulties – could be covered in the future. Interiors of historical locations could be documented for posterity and interest to the world at large. Additionally, historic sites and local businesses could use this form of photography to create virtual tours of their facilities, locations, or to show potential visitors rental locations.”

Kyle is carrying out the project while holidaying with his family on St Helena. Kyle has been here twice before and first visited the Island in 2008 when he worked on the St Helena Images Project for the museum. Kyle and his family will leave the Island on Monday, 7 August 2017.

Two photos of St Helena on Google Street View are attached to this press release.

#StHelena #GoogleStreetView #Google

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SHG

12 July 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

St Helena Government Communications Hub

Telephone: 22470
Email: kimberley.peters@sainthelena.gov.sh