I just conducted a curbside interview with a Google Street View photographer/driver. He declined a radio interview but he didn’t mind answering a few questions out the front of his motel and he let me take a few photos as well. I found him driving down Dempster Street in Esperance, West Australia, en route to his motel for the night and tomorrow he’s off to Ravensthorpe and continuing West towards Perth.

Employment and recruitment company Adecco won the contract to photograph Australia for Street View in the initial tender two years ago and they continue to run the operation on this second around Australia photography journey. They have hired 23 drivers in 23 cars to traverse Australian streets and collate the data which is sent to Google to translate into the Street View service we find on Google Maps and 3 of those drivers are covering West Australia.

The cameras this year are different to the previous round. The last set up was of 7 cameras plus one on top and each camera was about 2-3 inches in diameter.

The camera setup this year is different with larger cameras, 9 cameras covering 360 degrees horizontally and 1 camera on top plus this year the photography is accompanied by 3 lasers which are measuring the distance between the camera and the subject.

To take the photos the driver flicks a switch and starts driving. This driver said the biggest problem he faced was keeping the bugs off the camera lenses, although not a problem in Esperance he jokingly said the Nullabor was painful.