Map Quest

Last updated on November 2, 2024

Over the past couple of decades I have acquired a lot of images and have failed to document them properly. Now I want to take on the enormous task of mapping my finds.

There are three categories I want to photograph, map and geotag for future reference:

• Geocaches
• Murals, wall art and sculptures
• Neon signs

Geocaches

I’ve looked around a bit for an alternative to Google Maps and Google Earth but the fact remains- they have the best open-sourced mapping platform than anyone else. I can’t stand Google but damn, they make a good map system.

For plotting my found geocaches, I’ve downloaded all the .gpx files from geocaching.com and uploaded to Google Earth which can then convert to .kmz files for a map view of discovered caches. But, because importing and exporting data between two systems is hardly ever efficient as advertised, I am still doing some tweaking to format the data as I need to.

Murals, Street Art & Sculptures

I wish I was as organized as I want to be when out in the field. From here on out I promise myself to document names of the murals, artists, coordinates and any other bits of info to document. Because now I need to go in and add waymarkers to the map manually. This means going to Google My Maps, upload my image and plot it to the corresponding location.

Neon Signs

Just like the street art images, I need to plot the waypoints of my neon images on to a map by hand. I have almost 500 images of neon so this may take awhile.