Q&A with Dragan Kajtez:
Bosnia and Herzegovina comes to life on Street View
If you are Google Street View Trusted Photographer you can find original post here.
PDF of Google Street View Newsletter from November 2018.
If you are not Google Street View Trusted Photographer, you can read Interview down below
Dragan Kajtez [@DraganKajtez] is a top contributing trusted photographer who’s published thousands of images to Street View. He describes himself as a curious guy with many passions, including art, design, digital marketing and of course photography. What he knows, Dragan says he’s learned on his own because he’s dedicated and willing to put in a lot of work to acquire new skills. We believe him, not least because of the project you’ll read about here with which Dragan single-handedly turned his hometown Mrkonjić Grad into the first town in Bosnia and Herzegovina with Street View.
Tell us a bit about Mrkonjić Grad and why you decided to map it.
Mrkonjić Grad is a small town in Republika Srpska, part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The town is surrounded by lakes, rivers and mountains that you’ll be able to catch a glimpse of in my photos. Just like the rest of my country, Mrkonjić Grad is a beautiful place but sadly one that is underdeveloped and lacking in terms of opportunities for young people.
I’ve been struggling to get a job so I thought one way to show the world what I can do and perhaps get noticed was to start contributing to Google Maps. It all began in 2013, when I discovered Map Maker. At the time, Mrkonjić Grad and most of B&H had no streets or points of interest on Maps. After a while, I became a Regional Lead and started making video tutorials to help newbie mappers. Then I joined the Local Guides program where I continued to be just as active, creating and managing a few Local Guides G+ communities, including the two main ones for Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. In time, my interest in mapping naturally led me to Street View and I started wanting to do that as well. I took some of my first 360 images around Mrkonjić Grad with a cheap DSLR camera but since I had no tripod head, I had to improvise. I somehow managed to stitch the photos right and to my surprise the result wasn’t bad at all.
Caption: A 360 photo taken on the bank of Pliva River, south of Mrkonjić Grad . (Street View trusted photographer@DraganKajtez)
From then on I was hooked. I found out that it’d also be nice to have a smartphone so I bought a broken Nexus 4 which I managed to repair myself. But publishing stand-alone photospheres wasn’t going to cut it for me. I kept looking at the Street View coverage other countries had and decided I’d do the same for my hometown. That’s why I went online, got myself a used LG 360 camera and slowly started putting Mrkonjić Grad on the map.
What equipment did you use and how long did this project take you?
Most of the images I collected on foot, using my LG 360 and an improvised head mount. Sometimes I went out with my bike and put a stand on it to hold my smartphone.
Overall, I think it took me a few months to capture Street View of almost every street in town. On occasion, I had to go back and redo a collect if I didn’t like what I got the first time around.
What did you find most challenging during your collects?
Uploading the photos wasn’t easy because my computer isn’t very fast and neither is my internet connection at home. Also, there is a limit on the number of images I can upload at once through the Street View app. However, I’d say the biggest challenge were the connections and there’s still a little something to be desired in that department.
Name one special place in or near Mrkonjić Grad that we should go check out on Street View right away.
Balkana comes to mind right away. It’s a beautiful artificial lake on the slopes of Lisina mountains, 5 km west of Mrkonjić Grad.
Caption: Street View near Balkana Lake, Bosnia and Herzegovina. (Street View trusted photographer @DraganKajtez)
Thanks to you, Mrkonjić Grad has become the first town in Bosnia and Herzegovina to get such extensive Street View coverage. What do locals think about your work?
I’ve spoken to a few friends who are originally from Mrkonjić Grad but now live abroad and they think it’s great. Some locals also share that opinion, others consider me a bit of a fool for having done all this for free. By and large though, I’d say that most people in Bosnia and Herzegovina are not very familiar with Street View and are not able to understand its advantages. Hopefully, that will change in the future.
Foreign tourists seem to have the most appreciation for my work. When they ask me for directions and I tell them to just go on Maps and that I’ve created all they can see on there on my own, they’re all very surprised at first but love the fact that there’s Street View they can use.
Any plans for the future that you’d like to share with your fellow photographers.
I will continue to do my best to enrich Google Maps in my country. I’m also hoping that I’ll get to travel in the future, perhaps even get a job abroad and map there as well. On a different note, I’ve recently become a big fan of aerial 360 photography. Unfortunately I can’t afford to buy a drone right now so I’m thinking about improvising with my LG 360 attached to a balloon. We’ll see how that works out :)
What you think about this?