Positive Thinking!

It seems to help me in ways that few people even begin to appreciate. And I'm not sure that I will ever value those ways enough myself. For example, I seem to have an ability to look at a map or satellite photo and visualise quite quickly how the landscape might look. Sounds just a bit mundane, right? So there is a certain geographic website on which numerous people post their photographic shots from the UK landscape and urbscape. It is perhaps a slightly obsessive sort of site, but is undoubtedly of huge interest to anyone who is even remotely interested in geography. I sometimes call it a modern-day geographic 'Doomsday Book'.

I posted quite a few photos myself, and each photo has to be fairly accurately located on Ordnance Survey and/or Google mapping. Rather easy for me and most geographers. But you also get people who are more interested in the photography, and quite a few of those struggle to locate their photos, or just cannot flat out remember where they were taken. I've noticed hundreds of photos that are quite poorly located.But I can't exactly just go around annoying everyone by telling them they got it wrong!

So I noticed this one poster who has posted thousands of photos, all with a similar theme, from almost every year of his life. Sometimes he has a very rough idea where the shots were taken, and sometimes he gets it very wrong. And he struggles with the webware used for the photolocations. So I decide to PM him and offer some assistance with the photolocation. He accepts and I spent some years helping to identify the photolocations by looking at the photos and relating them to online historic maps, Google Map, Google Streetview, Google Earth and even other people's historic photos from closeby. Now not exactly a stellar activity to while away the hours by most people's standards, but I get great enjoyment and satisfaction out of it. He gets some free assistance on photolocation. I've even had times when he has got the images the wrong way round from the negatives. Or he's mixed a photolocation up with a place say in another county. And still I have been able to give a fairly accurate photolocation; sometimes just using my own visual memory of different places.

But what could I ever possibly do with that skill that would enable me to enjoy some latter day career satisfaction; satisfaction that has formerly been almost entirely absent. Not much, I think!

I believe I also have a few other similarly arcane skills, but never - it seems - the ability or opportunity to make good on a career. I'm a bit of a jack-of-all trades really; but master of none! I also seem to often thrive on some tasks that most people would undoubtedly find extremely tedious

It seems to help me in ways that few people even begin to appreciate. And I'm not sure that I will ever value those ways enough myself. For example, I seem to have an ability to look at a map or satellite photo and visualise quite quickly how the landscape might look. Sounds just a bit mundane, right? So there is a certain geographic website on which numerous people post their photographic shots from the UK landscape and urbscape. It is perhaps a slightly obsessive sort of site, but is undoubtedly of huge interest to anyone who is even remotely interested in geography. I sometimes call it a modern-day geographic 'Doomsday Book'.

I posted quite a few photos myself, and each photo has to be fairly accurately located on Ordnance Survey and/or Google mapping. Rather easy for me and most geographers. But you also get people who are more interested in the photography, and quite a few of those struggle to locate their photos, or just cannot flat out remember where they were taken. I've noticed hundreds of photos that are quite poorly located.But I can't exactly just go around annoying everyone by telling them they got it wrong!

So I noticed this one poster who has posted thousands of photos, all with a similar theme, from almost every year of his life. Sometimes he has a very rough idea where the shots were taken, and sometimes he gets it very wrong. And he struggles with the webware used for the photolocations. So I decide to PM him and offer some assistance with the photolocation. He accepts and I spent some years helping to identify the photolocations by looking at the photos and relating them to online historic maps, Google Map, Google Streetview, Google Earth and even other people's historic photos from closeby. Now not exactly a stellar activity to while away the hours by most people's standards, but I get great enjoyment and satisfaction out of it. He gets some free assistance on photolocation. I've even had times when he has got the images the wrong way round from the negatives. Or he's mixed a photolocation up with a place say in another county. And still I have been able to give a fairly accurate photolocation; sometimes just using my own visual memory of different places.

But what could I ever possibly do with that skill that would enable me to enjoy some latter day career satisfaction; satisfaction that has formerly been almost entirely absent. Not much, I think!

I believe I also have a few other similarly arcane skills, but never - it seems - the ability or opportunity to make good on a career. I'm a bit of a jack-of-all trades really; but master of none! I also seem to often thrive on some tasks that most people would undoubtedly find extremely tedious

Your photo location skills seem like a very niche skill to have. I’m sure there must be a gap in the market for those skills somewhere. You’ve clearly got a good eye for detail and an ability to do s job thoroughly.