Aerial map for a small town

A map for a small town which should work as a bridge between old and new folk

cartography Drone photography infographic map print small town Travel

My hometown, Dolné Kočkovce, Slovakia, Europe, finally got a map! What is unique about it? Let me take you through the short story of this project. I will share what went wrong, so you don't have to learn the way I did—the hard way.

The town's mayor approached me if I could help him get one of those hand-drawn maps such were typical some years ago in ski resorts around. Since a needed type of illustrator was no longer commercially available (and probably over the budget anyhow), I had to come up with something that would work with the use of the current assets.

With added graphics, I tried to follow perspective angles.

A dead end with hi-res panorama

Drone photography was an obvious choice. The town is tiny, not a ski resort with tall mountains; thus, I didn't need an airplane or a glider. My first concern was the resolution. I feard that with the with of 4 meters, the result would not withstand a critical look from a close distance.

I envisaged a strategy to photograph with as much detail as possible and then stitch around 30 hi-res RAW photographs in Adobe Lightroom. Only... it didn't work. :-D I am not entirely sure why; I suspect it has something to do with Photoshop (and Lightroom), expecting that I took all of them from one vantage point. Since our DJI drone moved from right to left, this point shifted every three photographs.

Then I thought, okay, maybe if I create separate panoramas from every group of three, it might work... only it didn't. In the end, I opted for an onboard panorama function of a DJI drone. The software produced a TIFF image with dimensions 8000x6144 pixels. The perspective was heavily slanted on the sides; the right side was extreme. Except anybody who saw the final picture didn't notice. It looks okay.

This didn't work as planned. Photoshop couldn't produce usable results.

More than an aerial map

One of the project goals was to create a bridge between the young generation and older folks. Thus, with the help of the major Martin Dolinský, we explored old maps and land documents for names of places not mentioned on today's maps. These maps went as old as 1920 with terms that wouldn't pass today's political correctness criteria. Others sounded simply funny, and it's not hard to imagine why they could find a way onto modern maps. Now, when somebody more senior mentions "Sráč," you can google it, sort of, on the town's main street. 🤗

The hand-drawn map stated it is from 1920.

Copywriting and photographs from the local photographer

The mayor did an excellent job that needed only here and there the work of a copywriter who summarized the town's history. We also acquired beautiful photos from a local photographer enthusiast, and you can thus tell the map is home-grown.