Find and share Earth’s most awe-inspiring imagery

During the pre-smartphone, pre-street-view era, Google Maps was an exciting way to see the world from the comfort of a desktop. But other than finding the house you grew up in all those years ago, its uses were limited.

Now with the advent of Stratocam, a program that allows users to take “snapshots” of the world’s most intriguing places and share them online, Google Maps’ extensive network of overhead visuals has recaptured its audience.

According to a blurb on Philly’s Curbed, and in more detail in article on the Huffington Post, a former Dreamworks and Google employee, Paul Rademacher, created Stratocam, a collection of aerial images taken from Google Earth.

Visitors to the site can vote on images that others have found, or surf the world and find their own, taking and adding their own photos to create a database of some of Earth’s most awe-inspiring imagery.