in focus: geotagging
Although I love shooting in film, there are some definite advantages to digital photography. One of the coolest benefits is the ability to geotag photos.
Geotagging is, simply, the ability to add latitudinal and longitudinal data to a photograph. This data is usually captured through some kind of GPS device and can be added to the photo’s EXIF data.
For those who don’t know, EXIF data is a summary of the camera’s information for each photo. The EXIF data is stored when the photo is taken. If you view the EXIF data on your computer, you can learn many things about your photograph, including shutter speed, aperture, focal length, metering mode and a lot more. EXIF data also remembers your camera’s make and model, as well as if you’ve edited the photo and what settings you used in camera to adjust the photo (such as sharpening or extra saturation).
So, geotagging has become the latest craze in digital photography. Not only can you geotag your photo, but when you add your images to photo sharing sites like flickr.com, the site reads the geotagged information. The cool thing about this feature is that your photo is now able to be searched via its location, not just from keywords. Your photo can also be added to galleries or maps and compared to photographs taken at similar sites.
Currently, the best way to geotag photos is to carry a small GPS device with you. It requires that, later on the computer, you add the data to photos manually, or via simple software designed to port such data into photographs.
Sites like flickr’s organizr already allow you to add geotagging data to photos as you upload them.
However geotagging has become so popular that many manufacturers are creating geotagging devices for cameras. Some devices are designed to be carried in your pocket, but sync with the time stamp on your camera to update the GPS info through support software. Other devices connect straight to your camera and add the GPS data to each photo as its taken.
The future of geotagging will definitely come through manufacturers including GPS capabilities directly into the camera. Some high end cameras already incorporate this data, but soon it’ll become a standard in digital photography.
It’s definitely worth learning to use geotagging and add GPS data to your photos. Not only will that allow you to sort your pictures based on where you took them, but it will also enable your photos to be categorized, searched, grouped and compared online, since many popular sites already have geotagging features.
Before you know it, you’ll be using sites like Google Earth to search for photos of interesting places. Although geotagging won’t improve your photography, I think it does improve the photography ‘experience’. Not only can you show people where you’ve been, but if you see a fantastic photograph, you can take note of its GPS data and go hunt for the exact same spot.
Geotagging could also be a lot of fun in other ways. It can be a great educational tool, teaching children geography skills. It could also become a great new sport, like a kind of scavenger hunt. You can challenge people to get to certain places, take a photo from a set of precise coordinates, and return with photographic evidence of each place. It could be done on a limited scale (a city) or on a wider scale (nationally or even globally).
Geotagging is definitely something to get involved in, especially while the technology is still developing.
Happy shooting!
David Smeaton
Tags: flickr, geotag, geotagging, gps, In Focus, map, photo, photography, travel
