People are able to memorize a large set of natural scenes and real-world objects (e.g., Konkle et al., 2010), for which there exists a massive stored knowledge base. In comparison, poorer memory performance can be expected for stimuli, such as aerial photographs, with which most people have only little experience. We have examined visual recognition memory for orthogonal (generally, less familiar scenes) and oblique (more familiar scenes) aerial images in expert and untrained groups of participants. The participants first memorized images of urban environments. Afterward, they were shown pairs of images and indicated which of the two they had seen. The results show that experts who use aerial photographs on a daily basis can significantly better extract domain-relevant information than untrained viewers. Moreover, experts not only better remember the gist of the scenes portrayed, but they also more efficiently encode and recall specific details about aerial photographs. The same data pattern was found for all types of land use and for all scene scales. In comparison, there was no significant difference in performance between first-year geography students and first-year psychology students.