Places to shoot in New England

Are you curious about interesting places to shoot in New England? Do you know about any such places? If so, this might be worth your while...


I have a habit - an obsessive quest some might say - of finding interesting places to go shooting. I hit Google to look for things (waterfalls, covered bridges, old mills) and I buy books about hikes & walks and interesting places (like waterfalls and covered bridges, etc.). I track down the exact locations as best as possible and record them in my mapping software, Microsoft Streets & Trips. When I go somewhere I used to print out an area map and detailed maps for each location. (Yes, I love maps.) Along the trip I would grab any tourist brochures that looked interesting, and make notes if I stumbled onto a cool place. (The brochures and notes now fill a small filing-cabinet drawer...)

Last fall I bought a portable GPS (Garmin Streetpilot 330) and found that I could import data points into it. So I've been performing a painful, manual process of typing the longtitude and latitude of each of my places into a text file that could be imported into my GPS. With a bunch of POIs (points of interest) loaded into my GPS I could pick one and go there, and then my GPS could tell me about my other POIs nearby, and I'd bounce from place to place on a day-long photography roadtrip.

Now that winter is ending I've been gearing up for shooting season to begin, so I justed started going through all those books and saved brochures and plotting them onto Streets & Trips. So far I have a measly 360 loaded, but I reckon that my office contains books and brochures listing well over 2,000 possible shooting locations. It will be quite a project, since I have to go through the brochures, plot it onto Streets & Trips, find a web site for easy clickable reference, manually get the longtitude and latitude, type that in, and import it into my GPS. But in the end I'd have a huge list of possible shooting locations all over New England.


Well I just found a program to make part of that job much easier, and it has many more possibilities. It's a little program called POIConverter, which can be found here. It will convert POIs from a number of different GPSes (TomTom, Garmin, GPS Exchange, etc.) and programs (Streets & Trips, Autoroute, Mapopolis, etc.) It will also output Microsoft Excel and CSV files.

What I had planned would take many many hours just took me less than a minute, and I have all of my POIs loaded into my GPS.

If you're interested, here is that CSV file. (This file will easily open in Excel or even notepad.) As of 3/18/06 it contains 360 POIs around New England, and I'll update it from time to time as I work on this project.


As it is today, it's kinda useful. If you use a GPS it should be trivial to get this data into your unit. (Though at this very instant it might need some clean-up, and I plan on doing that clean-up soon.) It might be possible to pull this info into your mapping software. If you use Streets & Trips here is my .EST file. Even if you don't do mapping or GPS, the CSV file is just text, and contains longitude and latitude coordinates which are easily mappable by Googlemaps. Most of the POIs also have web sites listed so you can get more info on the location.

But if there's enough interest I can do a lot more. It would be fairly trivial for me to write a VB program to interface with this data. It could easily launch Googlemaps using the long&lat, launch the web site, list the description and comments, filter the info (showing only waterfalls for instance, or searching for wildlife sanctuaries) and even show other nearby places. If you have interest in this *please* let me know! I have no need of this program myself (though I would find it useful) but interest and input from others would make it a worthwhile project.

Now here's where real interest could go wild: sharing locations. If you or other interested parties can add your locations we could easily build a huge list of interesting photographic locations in New England. And it would certainly be possible for others to start a similar projects for other regions.

A long time ago I started a website with a similar, but much grander idea, http://www.itsanadvent​ure.com/psma/. But I found it to be far too much work, though peeking at this site could give you an idea of how useful the info can be. Since this web site idea was too much work I'm envisioning something simpler - just a little program and/or database - but with most of the features that the web site shows. But to really make it all worthwhile I'd like to see if there are interested parties. All you need to do is let me know if you'll use the info, and definitely let me know if you'd be interested in sharing (or finding) other interesting places.

Great, now I need to buy a new GPS, lol. Mine is one of the first Garmins, very rudimentary. Just WPs', POIs' plotted while out and about, no comp software.

Would definitely be a fun way to blow through a weekend. Great idea.

You don't need to buy a GPS. All of my links have lat&long which is easily mapped by Googlemaps. Almost all of my links have a website for more info - they all will have websites will by the time I'm done (if at all possible).

For instance, here's the Googlemap for Wahconah Falls based on the long&lat, and a website for more info

Once I have the info stored it's quite easy to make links like the above. Piece of cake.

Of course if you had a GPS you could pull the info into it and there wouldn't be a need for paper maps, that's all.

Here is a link to some of the best software maps going I have the earlier version of TOPO that I use all the time, I'm thinking of upgrading to the new version, mine only covers Connecticut and the Berkshires. the new one covers every New England State.
TOPO! features the best maps - for both PC and Mac
* Get 3D views and fly-thrus
* Has easy-to-use-interface and features
* Use TOPO! with your GPS
* Gives you the best prints
* Includes updated street & roads
* Enables you to update your maps and roads when new information is available

http://maps.nationalge​ographic.com/topo/stat​e.cfm

This one is the GPS Waypoint Manager and Trip Planner
http://maps.nationalge​ographic.com/topo/gps.​cfm

Check out all the products, pretty neat

Scott... just saw this thread. Question: Do you ever sleep?

5 hours a night, whether I need it or not.



I really need to hit Megabucks so I can retire....

Scottes wrote:
5 hours a night, whether I need it or not.



I really need to hit Megabucks so I can retire....

I know the feeling, Don't ya just hate the fact that work always gets in the way of doing the important stuff.

Have any of you folks gotten to the Quabin
resevior , out by belchertown & ware ,MA
nice area out that way and then there is Sturbridge and its flee markets during the summer and sturbridge village

just food for thought

I love the Quabbin, but I never found many great places to shoot. There's a wonderful little town about halfway up the west side, and a waterfall in the same area. It's a beautiful area, no doubt. Any tips would be appreciated.

I've been to the Old Sturbridge Village a couple times. I love that place. I never knew about any other photo opportunities, though.

scottes:

Hi. I grew up around there,in Ware have not been back for some time, but remember its nice location and some of the things around there , there is all so the measum for the Sat evening Post Cartonnist I belive Southbridge,
and alice's resturant is out there too, Also back in the 50tys there was a house in the woods that had sod roof , belonged to a Mr.George Constantine, Who also so drove a D'jag on the race course back then:

thats all for now