Photowalking and GPS go hand in hand
You know, I’ve always wanted to take advantage of geotagging my photos, especially the ones I shoot on a photowalk. What a cool way to organize and track the progress of a photowalk. Many of the tools out there are multistep confused messes.
Drew over at BenSpark.com has mentioned before that he uses a special GPS unit called a GiSTEQ™ PhotoTrackr™. He seems to really like it, and it works quite well for him. The GiSTEQ website indicates the the included software syncs with a Windows based computer, so there is some limitations.
I am curious if the file outputted is an industry standard file. Maybe with an open source app, one could merge the information elsewhere….hmmmm.
Well, Drew is having a contest over at his blog, giving us all the chance to win one of the new units. On second thought, I want one, so NO ONE go over there and enter the contest.
BTW, while I’m thinking of it…what would I do with one of these things? Well, I think if I had the opportunity to do some nice wilderness or forest landscape shooting, I could really use a nice GPS unit like the PhotoTrackr. Keeping a good idea where each shot is taken could make for a nice series. I could find a nice location and shoot it in all 4 seasons. Having a nice and accurate record of where each shot is taken would be great.
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Take a look at some similar posts:
- Falmouth Photowalk
- Drew, the New England Photowalker
- Photowalking Downtown SF Recap
- Let’s Photowalk the Santa Monica pier!
- Great contest results from a blog-friend
Comments
Comment from trevorcarpenter
Time: December 1, 2007, 8:57 am
Thanks Drew. Yeah, I mean get the GPS file. I’m a Mac guy, and would need to be able to have a work around. It’s probably doable.
Comment from eejit
Time: December 1, 2007, 4:25 pm
Drew,
… and the GPS info is written into the EXIF data of each photo, the photos can be uploaded to Flickr, Locr or SmugMug and automatically geotagged. You can also upload the images to Zooomr (not through the software) once they have had the GPS data added and then upload through Zooomr and the images are geotagged. …
Once the GPS data (lat/long) has been written into the EXIF, the photos are already geotagged. Zooomr, Flickr and Co do nothing more than use those geotags to place the photos on a map.
What those sites can do is take an un-geotagged photo and manually geotag it by getting you to place it on a map.
Comment from Craig
Time: December 2, 2007, 1:41 pm
Unfortunately I don’t have time to go into detail but there are several relatively low-cost (around $100 or less) out there that don’t feature a display but which will let you download a GPS track (in GPX format) to your computer via BT or USB. This can then be used with one of several freeware and shareware apps for Windows, Mac, and Linux to geotag photos. Google will turn up the specifics.
Comment from Richard Akerman
Time: December 18, 2007, 10:13 am
There are very few Mac-compatible GPS logger options. The problem is that they use custom serial-to-USB drivers, and only support the drivers on Windows. The PhotoTrackr and PhotoTrackr Lite are not Mac compatible. See my posting “GPS loggers and Macs: why can’t we all get along?”
http://scilib.typepad.com/science_library_pad/2007/08/gps-loggers-and.html
Comment from Drew
Time: December 1, 2007, 8:44 am
Trevor, do you mean the GPS file from the unit? I think I could find that out. The unit works great and I have had much fun with it. I need to take it off road though and into the wood.
There have also been some upgrades tot e software and you can export the whole map to your blog so if you were to use this on a photowalk you could synch all the cameras of all the people participating, upload their photos into the software and the GPS info is written into the EXIF data of each photo, the photos can be uploaded to Flickr, Locr or SmugMug and automatically geotagged. You can also upload the images to Zooomr (not through the software) once they have had the GPS data added and then upload through Zooomr and the images are geotagged.