Jorge Quinteros
Blogger, web enthusiast & avid photographer based in Brooklyn.

30th March 2009

The Quest for Geotagging

Geotagging an image refers to storing the latitude and longitude coordinates of a location into the photo’s metadata, so as to establish exactly where the photo was taken.

As an amateur photographer, it’s that where element of a photo that interest me when browsing inspirational photographs on Flickr. Lets face it, when you share your photos, the second most common characteristic viewers want to know about it aside from a specific technique used to capture it, is learning where it was taken and geotagging your images gives them that and eliminates them asking.

Lately I’ve become obsessed in finding the best way to geotag my photos and I’ve come across a couple alternatives that can either having me spending on a camera accessory or implementing an additional use for the iPhone.

Camera Accessory

If you’re a Nikon user as I am, I would undoubtedly suggest you subscribe to Scott & Matt’s weekly show D-Town, where I became aware of a few GPS attachments for your Nikon that bring forth the feature of automatically geotagging your photos.

• There’s the Nikon GP-1 GPS Unit where the crew over at Digital Review offer an extensive assessment on.
• Another is the Jobo Photo GPS unit, which delivers the same functions but at a lesser price. A representative gives a demo of the device at a trade show to display it’s features.

iPhone Route

The GPS feature on the iPhone could be used to do more than give you directions when you combine it with apps that harness this technology.

• Trails is the first GPS iPhone app that allows you to record, import and export tracks onto your iPhone. This allows you to easily geotag your non-iPhone photos via software such as HoudahGeo. Felix provides an instructive screencast in accomplishing this.
• G-Park is a ‘where did I park’ application but I use it to obtain coordinates of locations I’ve photographed in. When launching app, I simply click on the Park Me tab which will make the device find your whereabouts. You then click on Where did I Park? and you’ll be prompted with some options and you’ll click on Exact Location which will then launch Google Maps and it’ll present you with the coordinates in the search field which is what you’ll need to incorporate into your photos to specify where they were taken.

The biggest difference between the two options mention are price and the extra work involved with the iPhone route. I don’t think there’s need to geotag every single photo you take but knowing there’s alternatives to achieving the same purpose is noteworthy to determine which one works for you.

iPhoto’s Places allows you to easily geotag your photos but for me the quest was in finding a way to this by eliminating the manual task that this software offers, so investing on a GPS unit for my camera seems to be the best route.