Back in the days when I shot film, I put together elaborate slide presentations to show friends after a vacation to some exotic spot. Those slide presentations consisting of several carrousels and hundreds of slides. People would ask me where I took a particular picture and I couldn’t remember exactly because I hadn’t jotted the exact location down. I didn’t jot every location down because there just wasn’t time so I would have to answer them with my best guess. That wasn’t always enough for them but it was the best I could do back then. Today, I shoot digital and employ geotagging to keep track of those details for me. Isn’t technology great? I can shoot pictures freely without having to remember details like when and where I took them.
Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs; video, Webster, or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. These data usually consist of latitude and longitude coordinates, though they can also include altitude, bearing, accuracy data, and place names. All this is accomplished by harnessing a GPS (Global Positioning Satellite System) Receiver with a digital camera. We all know how handy the GPS navigation systems are to have on our vehicles and how easier portable GPS systems are to use when hiking instead of the old fashioned magnetic compasses. Now we can use the same technology to keep track of where we shoot pictures.
In a perfect world, every digital camera would come with a GPS chip installed but we don’t live in a perfect world. There will come a time in the future when camera manufacturers will design a GPS chip in their cameras circuitry but that day will only come after enough users communicate that desire to the manufacturers. For now, we have to use an auxiliary GPS receiver to Geotag our photos and there are several routes that we can take in doing that. The route you may choose to travel is determined by the camera equipment that you use.
For the Nikon aficionados, there is an elegant solution called Blue2Can by Red Hen. This thumb nail size gadget plugs into a port on the front of Nikon DSLRs like the models D3, D300, D200, D2X, D2Xs, and the D2Hs. The Blue2Can communicates wirelessly with any BlueTooth GPS receiver, which can be setting on the dashboard of you car or clipped to your belt. The Blue2Can automatically tags each picture with latitude and longitude metadata. After uploading these pictures to your Flickr Page, you will be presented with a map link. Clicking on that map link will present you with a map that shows you exactly where the picture was taken.
What was that? You don’t own a Blue2Can compatible Nikon? Well you can still Geotag all your photos but you will have to do it manually combing the use of a portable GPS receiver and a computer program likeRoboGEO or GPS-CS1. To use the RoboGEO you need to carry a portable GPS receiver that will create a log of all your locations where you shot pictures. The RoboGEO program will then take those locations and attach the metadata to your photos using either a laptop or desktop computer. I prefer to carry a laptop with me and Geotag my photos in the field once I return to my base camp.
