Story Map 'slide show' for holiday photos

[NickShannon]

I work in a GIS department & would like to create a story map of colleagues recent holidays to demonstrate ESRI Story Maps.

Questions:
1.  Can I create a slideshow i.e. a story map which automatically flicks from one photo to the next (for a big screen)
2.  Does 'story map' read a photo's EXIF data i.e. it's location

Thanks for your help.

[WilliamCraft · Accepted solution]

1.  Can I create a slideshow i.e. a story map which automatically flicks from one photo to the next (for a big screen)
2.  Does 'story map' read a photo's EXIF data i.e. it's location

Answer to Question 1: I don't believe the current story map templates available for download on Esri's website would allow for you to achieve a slideshow effect as you describe.  I've been through them all.  While some are more configurable (and expandable) than others, it doesn't appear that "flicks from one photo to another" is an option for those specific templates.  That being said, you could develop your own story map if you're a development guru. 

Answer to Question 2: No.  The location information that can be embedded in certain photos is not read by the story map.  Instead, you will control the represented location for each photo you upload to your story map.  Some templates allow this through lat/long or address information stored within a spreadsheet which the story map directly consumes.  Other templates allow you to deliberately place each photo onto the map, thereby defining the location manually.  As far as I know, none of the story map templates utilize location information stored within a photo.  As I mentioned above, however, you could probably develop your own story map that does this if you're a development guru.

[GregoryL_Azou]

I confirm both of your answer 🙂


We have seen couple of implementation of a slide-show mode in MapTour.  This is something we are for a further release of MapTour.  From now I can give sample code to get you started but it would require development skills.


Map Tour builder look for picture location metadata and will use them when you add a new point to pre-locate the new point location:

• when you are uploading picture from your computer in a Feature Service (on modern browser IE9+)


•   when using picture hosted in Flickr/Picasa/Facebook (see import dialog for help as those service by default don't expose picture location in their API)

The point location is then saved in a webmap layer, so any update to the picture location metadata won't be reflected in the app.

[NickShannon]

Thanks for your replies.

I notice this custom story map can be run as a slideshow:  http://storymaps.esri.com/stories/janegoodall/

[WilliamCraft]

You're welcome.  It's true that the link you provided does show a story map that can be played as a slideshow, but someone took the time to customize an existing story map with some development effort.  That functionality is not provided by default from any of the out-of-the-box templates that was originally provided on Esri's Story Map site.  The correct answer to your question that I provided still stands.  It would be nice if you could mark the correct answer with the green check.