I was so excited by a gadget that I recently bought that I wanted to let everyone know about it.If your interested in the potential of using Geo-Tagged Photographs then please read on...
The gadget is a small GPS sync device (25pounds on ebay!) which allows me to geotag my photographs (taken on most digital cameras - I use a Cannon 350D) with GPS coordinates.
There are many other simple methods by which a photograph can be tagged (the longitude lattitude information entered into the images metadata) with the geographical location in which it was taken. You can even use your in-car GPS device to help you.
Navman have a range of in car navigation devices that include a digital camera. These generate geocoded photos that can be copied off the device, shared and used as navigation targets. Also see the NavPix Library a site for sharing geocoded photos: www.navman.com/navpix
Once they are tagged we can view photographs much more dynamically, and navigate them via maps online such as through mappr, or through an application like Google Earth. You can create and export a Google Earth KML file and share your photos and geo-tracks with other people using Google Earth.
See an excellent example from National Geographic where they represent features of the Zakouma National Park, such as elephant sitings or locations of camps.
Manually Geo-Tagging
(if you dont have a GPS device you can simply geo-tag your images using a combination of Picasa http://picasa.google.com/ and Google Earth. From within Picasa you can select to manually geo-tag your photographs by pin-pointing the location on the Google Earth globe (not that specific if your in some of the more uncharted and remote areas).
www.mappr.com. Current online photomaps are general and consist mostly of people’s random holiday snaps.What cool things could I do with this...
There are many ways you could use Geo-tagging from help during production (i.e. revisiting exact locations) all the way through to new and interesting ways of delivering content to an audience. I've drafted a few of my ideas below, the best ones i'm keeping for future development, but I would encourage everyone to experiment with new gadgets and try doing more with GPS than just plotting your car journey.
- Paul Williams
We could build a user-generated photographic map of British Natural History. The interface would allow the user to filter the images he is interested in, peeling away layers of images, to show a a bird watchers photo map, a geological map, a habitat map... the list is endless and all created from User-Generated-Photographs.
Track an Adventure
* Create a GPS photo-diary of an adventure, more dynamic and exciting than a regular blog
* The exact route of an expedition or filming trip could be tracked and uploaded to the map.
* The audience can see the trail that the crew followed and the exact spot on earth where the crew took photographs. This can also be linked to daily diary entries and even video clips.
Geological Photo-Map
As a Geologist one of my first thoughts was to create a Geographically accurate Photographic Map of the Geology of Britain - to show people where the best sites are - a geo-accurate photographic field guide! Quite a step on from the original 19th Century William Smith Map.
This would tie in really well with an online field guide map (something iv'e already been working on by plotting my field visits on a Google Maps http://ironammonitepalaeontology.blogspot.com/)
Because geological exposures change very little the images on this map would correlate very well with what could be observed in the field.
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