Geotagging

[Ed Richards]

I keep track of the GPS coordinates for most pictures I take. I have started putting that data into the metadate on my files. My WWW generation tool has now incorporated geotagging into the output. Click on the map icon by some of the photos in this gallery:

http://www.epr-art.com/galleries/a1-new/

Does this look useful?

[QT Luong]

That's a very nice way to present the information. What software do you use ?

[Ed Richards]

> What software do you use?

The Turning Gate suite of programs, primarily Highside Gallery Pro, which run as a Lightroom plugin. I do my LF editing in Photoshop, but I use Lightroom as a digital asset management program, and to generate my WWW pages. It will also run shopping carts, which I have not enabled at this point:

http://lr.theturninggate.net/

[Renato Tonelli]

Besides being useful the information is also enjoyable.

[domaz]

How are you tagging them? Just by clicking pinpoints on a map manually? I can't help but think this could be a neat phone app. Once your done taking a picture have a Phone App store the Latitude/Longitude of where you are and you would punch in something like Filmholder #X Side #A or a note to yourself. Then your phone would have a record of the location and the exact frame for later easy geotagging.

[Tim Povlick]

Or take the exact same image with your camera phone and have phone geo-tag for you automatically. What? Your current phone does not have camera and autonomous GPS built in. Time for an upgrade.

_ .. --
TiM

[tgtaylor]

FWIW, the image of Immaculate Conception is great although I would quibble with the model (?) at the alter - it looks too posed for me. Also, it's great to know that I am not alone in photographing church interiors!

Also great (IMO) is "Bolivar Peninsula" - love the sky in that one!

As far as "geotagging" images, I wouldn't be against such tagging for the usual 'tourist destination' images but against tagging those that took a significant investment of time and effort to find.

Thomas

[Lachlan 717]

How are you tagging them? Just by clicking pinpoints on a map manually? I can't help but think this could be a neat phone app. Once your done taking a picture have a Phone App store the Latitude/Longitude of where you are and you would punch in something like Filmholder #X Side #A or a note to yourself. Then your phone would have a record of the location and the exact frame for later easy geotagging.

I use an iPhone app called Theodolite. It not only gives the geotag, it also gives your view as a compass angle.

This is very useful when working out potential sunrise/sunset locations when used with a solar/lunar calander. Find a good location, shoot I with this app and go home to work
out the best times and days to shoot there.

[Struan Gray]

I love maps and geotagging of information, and I like what Ed has done, so please read the following as nitpicks.

1) The maps don't always tell me (a furriner) where I am. New Orleans and Biloxi are names I recognise, but not Opelousas or Salisbury. Worse, the maps don't tell me which state I'm in, or allow me to zoom out and see where I am. The image captions do tell me which state I'm in, but they are two clicks from the maps and there is no easy way to see both sets of information at once.

2) I get no overview of how the images relate to each other, only single dots on isolated map squares. An overall map, or the ability to zoom out and see markers for the other images at large scales would give me a better idea of the project.

3) There are many images not tagged. That makes me wonder whether there is a hiearchy I should be recognising, or some other information that relates the untagged images to the tagged ones - in which case, which ones?

4) The map icons are out of keeping with your otherwise consistent design, both in placement and look.


In short, I think the maps are a useful enhancement to the individual images, but detract from the sense of a coherent project. It would improve greatly if you could find a way of linking to individual maps from the enlarged views of the images, and a way to have an overview map with all the images marked.

[Robert Hughes]

Geotagging? I thought this would be about spray-painting your sign on the closest available rock... "AA was here, dawg!"

[Ed Richards]

In the old days, I shot a GPS point with a Magellen handheld, then downloaded the file to my computer. Now I use an iPhone 3GS (built in GPS) and just take a picture of the site - all the GPS data, I think including heading, is automatically put into the metadata, where I can grab it.

Struan,

While it is not obvious - I need to add instructions - if you click on the coordinates on the popup map, you go to google maps, and that will orient you.

> FWIW, the image of Immaculate Conception is great although I would quibble with the model (?) at the alter - it looks too posed for me.

Trust me, no models and no setups in my work. That was live action street photography 4x5 with a Sinar F2 in a dim church and 15 second exposure. She did not even know I was there, pure luck in making the shot work.

[tgtaylor]

That was live action street photography 4x5 with a Sinar F2 in a dim church and 15 second exposure. She did not even know I was there, pure luck in making the shot work.

You seem have much better luck than I. When I walk into a church with a LF camera, everyone in the church seems to know immediately - it's like telepathy or something. The first time I photographed in Saint Francis Cathedral in San Francisco with LF (Toyo 45CF), a Franciscan came up and silently stood at my side before I even reached down to take out the camera. Nervously I asked "Father, is it of if I take a picture?" "Sure, go ahead!"

[Struan Gray]

While it is not obvious - I need to add instructions - if you click on the coordinates on the popup map, you go to google maps, and that will orient you.

Aha! I clicked and double clicked all over the map, but not on the caption.

I never was any good at games.

In a sense though, that's my point. I like the clean look to your galleries, and it would be a shame to clutter it up with navigation. It's the holy grail of graphic design to make the navigation obvious but not intrusive.


Struan

[Ed Richards]

Struan,

I did not figure it out myself until your question.:-)

> I like the clean look to your galleries, and it would be a shame to clutter it up with navigation.

That is what I am wrestling with. What drives my use of GPS is that my LA photos are part of a long term documentation project of areas that I believe are going to wash away. By 2100 most of south LA will be periodically flooded if there is anything at all to global warming. A storm like Katrina or Rita, blowing through south LA just west of New Orleans, could do it next summer. I am building my galleries as part of this project. I try to make images that stand alone as art, but also hold together as a picture of the area. The geotagging is to give them geographic coherence. I have thought about separate pages with maps, but I do not have the software tools to do that seamlessly, at least at this point.

The key to my current presentation is that it is generated from a content management system, so I can add and change images and republish, without having to hard code anything, and with the ability to change the look and organization by just modifying templates. Since I have a day job that has nothing to do with computer coding, I have to depend on available tools - I cannot put a lot of time into the WWW stuff or I would never get to shoot.

I expect that I will get better tools with time - the question at this point is whether the added map bug is worth the distraction.

[Struan Gray]

One idea. Since the pop-up maps are not actually navigable, there is no need for them to be a Google Earth view with a Google Earth position marker. You don't have *so* many images, so it would be possible to make your own maps in your preferred style and have them in the gallery as images. You could still link to an offsite placemarker in the full Google maps in the caption. More work, but more flexible and no real programming.

I like sea charts instead of maps for coastal areas. They lack the busy fuss of land maps and satellite images, and are generally cleaner to look at. Mind you, all the online NOAA charts for the Gulf coast I've seen have the sea full of numbered squares, which isn't much better than Google's littoral clutter.

[Jack Dahlgren]

I was in the same situation, trying to figure out where things were and hoping I could zoom and pan the map or seeing how these photographs related to each other geographically. The ability to zoom out gives a better sense of where they are.