An ortho-photo is a certain kind of photo mosaic. In map-making an orthographic projection is a highly useful top-down, completely flat view of an object or an area.. Ortho-photos are one of the primary assets I deliver when I do site surveys . A normal photo has a perspective which means that lines are not parallel, and there is an uneven scale throughout the photo. I'll show you what I mean:
Photo:
Orthophoto
You can see in the photo that the road in the middle of the frame is clearly visible, but the roads near the edge of the frame are visually blocked by the trees. In the orthophoto, every pixel is a straight down view and so trees do not visually block the roads.
When attempting to capture a 100-acre property in one photo, you might end up with something like this: As you can see especially in the woods - it is very hard to see what the roads are through the trees. You would also have to fly very high (well above 400ft legal limit) to get a picture of such a large area.
Another benefit to these orthophotos is that they are many photos stitched together. I can create a very large image and view the entire property at once with no perspective warping. It is hard if not impossible to get a single image of a large property. Here is the full ortho-photo of the Mountain Mafia Off-Road Park, compared to normal aerial photographs attempting to capture the entire property (above). The full ortho-photo was created at 15,000 x 7,000 resolution - 50x HD resolution and 8x more total pixels compared to a single 12MP drone photos at 4,000 x 3,000. (For this web page I reduced the size of the Orthophoto).
This is practically a satellite image! At any rate - I will be back to scan this property again and create a final product when the snow has fully melted. Very excited to show progress on this project; I can't wait to give them their final product. Shout out to Mountain Mafia for letting me share anything I want with this project. Some very cool work that I've done has been under Non-Disclosure Agreements, so it's nice to be able to share what I've been working on.
This was all created on my Scout Day, the initial day when I go on site and figure out what oddball things I need to be concerned with for the scan. I need to increase my altitude for the back half of the property - trees on a hill were a total of 220 feet high, so I have to keep in mind my minimum altitude should be 250 feet. I also need to go wider with my flight path as some details on the southern end were not captured. Finally when I scan this again I will start at approximately 1!:30 am, to minimize shadows in the valley. Most importantly I'm waiting for the snow to melt.
An ortho-photo is a certain kind of photo mosaic. In map-making an orthographic projection is a highly useful top-down, completely flat view of an object or an area.. Ortho-photos are one of the primary assets I deliver when I do site surveys . A normal photo has a perspective which means that lines are not parallel, and there is an uneven scale throughout the photo. I'll show you what I mean:
Photo:
Orthophoto
You can see in the photo that the road in the middle of the frame is clearly visible, but the roads near the edge of the frame are visually blocked by the trees. In the orthophoto, every pixel is a straight down view and so trees do not visually block the roads.
When attempting to capture a 100-acre property in one photo, you might end up with something like this: As you can see especially in the woods - it is very hard to see what the roads are through the trees. You would also have to fly very high (well above 400ft legal limit) to get a picture of such a large area.
Another benefit to these orthophotos is that they are many photos stitched together. I can create a very large image and view the entire property at once with no perspective warping. It is hard if not impossible to get a single image of a large property. Here is the full ortho-photo of the Mountain Mafia Off-Road Park, compared to normal aerial photographs attempting to capture the entire property (above). The full ortho-photo was created at 15,000 x 7,000 resolution - 50x HD resolution and 8x more total pixels compared to a single 12MP drone photos at 4,000 x 3,000. (For this web page I reduced the size of the Orthophoto).
This is practically a satellite image! At any rate - I will be back to scan this property again and create a final product when the snow has fully melted. Very excited to show progress on this project; I can't wait to give them their final product. Shout out to Mountain Mafia for letting me share anything I want with this project. Some very cool work that I've done has been under Non-Disclosure Agreements, so it's nice to be able to share what I've been working on.
This was all created on my Scout Day, the initial day when I go on site and figure out what oddball things I need to be concerned with for the scan. I need to increase my altitude for the back half of the property - trees on a hill were a total of 220 feet high, so I have to keep in mind my minimum altitude should be 250 feet. I also need to go wider with my flight path as some details on the southern end were not captured. Finally when I scan this again I will start at approximately 1!:30 am, to minimize shadows in the valley. Most importantly I'm waiting for the snow to melt.
(c) Murdock Design Build 2022