I found a solution here: http://kyleyu.com/?q=node/356
It gives a very useful function to return the actual URL after redirection:
function get_furl($url)
{
$furl = false;
// First check response headers
$headers = get_headers($url);
// Test for 301 or 302
if(preg_match('/^HTTP\/\d\.\d\s+(301|302)/',$headers[0]))
{
foreach($headers as $value)
{
if(substr(strtolower($value), 0, 9) == "location:")
{
$furl = trim(substr($value, 9, strlen($value)));
}
}
}
// Set final URL
$furl = ($furl) ? $furl : $url;
return $furl;
}
So you pass the Google Place Photo request uRL to this function and it returns the actual URL of the photo after the redirection which then can be used with CURL. It also explains that sometimes, the curl option curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
doesn't always work.