How Do You Geotag Your Photos?

Posted by Justin Korn
on March 20, 2009

GeotagDo you geotag your photos?  How accurate are you with your geotagging?  Do you think it is important to have accurate geotagging?  How often do you take your camera out for a photowalk only to find out later you have no idea where you took the picture?

If you answered yes, somewhat, yes, all the time to the above questions, then you answered them the exact same way I did, and I am out to fix the ’somewhat’ answer and the ‘all the time’ answer.

Currently, when I’m out with my camera, I try very hard to keep track of where I am, where I’m going, and where I’ve been.  When I upload my pictures to Flickr, I geotag them there.  I can usually look at the Google map and figure out roughly where each picture was taken, but 1) It’s a long, time consuming process and 2) The photos on my computer are still not geotagged.

I’ve been thinking about grabbing myself a geo-tracker to track my whereabouts for me and then go through the process of matching my photos up with the devices log by the time stamp.  There are a few photographers out there that do this now.  Matter of fact, just today I was browsing around FriendFeed and came across this thread.  Jeremy Brooks points out his method for geotagging his photos, which in the end, it’s probably better and quicker then my current flow, but still doesn’t satisfy what I’m looking for (but is pretty darn close).

So, what am I looking for?  Ideally, a device that will geotag my photos as I take them and write that data to the EXIF data in the RAW file (not JPEG).  If that is not possible, a program that will use data from a geo-tracker and write the EXIF data to the RAW file when I am back at home in front of my computer.  The key is to be as painless and least time consuming as possible.  Is this too much to ask for?

At this point, I do not have an answer.  Looking through the above mentioned thread on FriendFeed, it seems there is no good answer right now.  Jeremy’s approach might be the answer, but I am hoping to get some ideas flowing with other photographers as to what they currently do.  Is there a device out there that will do what I am looking for?  A good software/hardware combination?  Am I being too picky?

If I get a few good ideas (that are affordable), I’ll give them a try and review them for everyone else’s benefit.

Till next time…

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  • The software I use to convert the track file is based on an open source project GPSBabel (http://www.gpsbabel.org/). It will work on pretty much any platform. The tagging software is mac-specific, but there are other programs that will work on a PC.

    I highly recommend that you tag your original file. This ensures that the geotag data follows it wherever it goes. You can always copy the files to a "pre-tag" directory until you are confident that the tagging software is not messing anything up.
  • I use the same device as Jeremy. However, I'm on a Windows PC, so I'm using GeoSetter to sync the photos and write to the XMP sidecar files.

    A sporadic problem is that the server that GeoSetter uses won't be available, so my photos won't get the City, State and Country information. Then I'd just have to wait a day or two to try again.

    As for writing directly to the RAW file, GeoSetter can do that, but I'm still a bit scared to screw anything up.
  • Thanks for the input Bryan.

    I'm a PC myself as well. I'm not sure if Jeremy's software is Mac specific,
    but if that is the case, I'll surely need to find a different route (unless
    I have a change of heart soon).
  • I wonder if I'm being too picky/lazy too. I don't like the fact that cameras (except one and a few mobiles) still don't have geotagging built-in. As as I said on FriendFeed, I used Google Maps to indicate to our clients where I shot the photos. Some of it is guess work if I've shot a few sites in a day. Sometimes I take a picture of the cross-street or a landmark and try to match that up with Google's Street View. I want the same thing you want, but I'm also limited in that I do not have an SLR/DSLR. Please let me know what you find.
  • Faboomama - I'll be sure to post any findings when/if I find them. Thanks
    for starting that thread on FriendFeed!
  • I'm basically using Jeremys workflow but with a Garmin Legend GPS that I also use when I'm out hiking, biking etc. I transfer the track to my computer and convert it to .gpx with GPSbabel (freeware). I put the memory card with all photos in a card reader. Next, I use ImageIngester to read the photos from the card, rename them, apply some ITPC data, convert them to DNG and finally geotag them, all in a single step.
  • Thanks for sharing Henrik!

    Do you need to convert them to DNG or can you keep them in RAW format with
    your process?
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