Geotagging the Cincinnati PhotoWalk with GPS

This past Saturday I participated in the first (annual?) Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photowalk via the downtown Cincinnati route led by David Ziser. It was a great event that went off without a hitch and there are a ton of interesting photographs showing up in the Cincinnati Group Pool.

In this post I'll show a few of my images and discuss how I went about geotagging them by carrying a GPS unit along with me. First, a look at our route with markers to indicate the location from which each of my photos were taken:

Our Route for the Cincinnati Photowalk
23 August 2008

Tracking your Photowalk with GPS
The first piece of the geotagging puzzle is (obviously) the GPS unit itself. There are a few ways of going about this, ranging from specialized field/hiking units to small devices that continuously log your location. I just used the one that was in my vehicle - a Mio c320 Digiwalker. While not specifically designed for photography, this unit (like many others) can save what is called a Track Log of your coordinates every few seconds or so.

Syncronize Your Watches...
To make your life considerably easier, remember to sync the time on your camera with the time on your GPS device! As you'll see shortly, the magic of this depends on the clocks clicking together.

Start the tracking and bag the GPS
You'll need to test this with your device, but most units should be able to get a fix on the GPS satelites through the fabric of your camera bag, provided it is thin. Most bags have an outer pocket that isn't too padded, so this will probably be your best bet. Just turn on the GPS and be sure to dim the backlight on your screen in order to get the most out of your battery.

During our walk, I went for about 4 hours before the unit started to have battery trouble. If this were a longer walk I would need to figure out some way to power the device (it can run on +5V from the USB connection) or disable the screen entirely to max out the life.

Now that you've got the GPS tracking, head out and take the nice photographs like you always would. Try hard to forget that The Man is in your bag tracking you!!

Tagging the photos with GeoSetter
Once you've loaded the photos onto your computer, copy the GPX Tracklog from your GPS device into the same directory. You'll need to check the manual or ask online about how to do this on your particular model.

Next, download and fire up the (free!) GeoSetter program and navigate to your folder of images. Geosetter will detect the track log and automatically draw a line on the map illustrating your journey. Next, select all of your images and click the Synchronize Geo Data button. After a short while your images will begin to appear plotted out on the map - cool!!

The last step in geotagging is to save your image files with their newly geotagged metadata. While setting up GeoSetter, be sure you look through all of the options and select things like "Save Flickr Geotags" if you plan to upload them to Flickr.

What if I didn't sync my clocks?
If you forgot to sync your camera's clock with the GPS unit, you'll want to take advantage of GeoSetter's ability to compensate. It will automatically adjust for some small jitter, but just before you sync it provides a nice interface that you can tweak until the clock shown matches the one on your camera. Note that this (of course) depends on your PC being in sync with the GPS... most computers these days can sync their time with the internet clocks - I found mine to be within 10 seconds or so of the GPS device. Good enough for me.

Use GeoSetter BEFORE Lightroom adjustments.
This is an important one, as GeoSetter tends to replace the metadata in your files instead of simply merging the information. If you've already loaded them into Lightroom, you'll need to select all & choose Metadata | Read Metadata after you've finished the geotagging process. This is annoying since you will lose your Lightroom adjustments, but not a big deal so long as you remember to tag first. I use Lightroom to import & convert to DNG; my process was to import via lightroom, run GeoSetter, then have LR re-read the metadata to pick up the changes.

Speaking of Lightroom, check out the little arrow next to the GPS field in the metadata section. Click this and it'll take you over to Google Maps with your photo's location pinpointed! :)

Upload to Flickr
Now that you're tagged, do your usual edits and then upload your photos to Flickr. Prior to uploading, you'll want to ensure that your Flickr Privacy Settings are set to allow automatic placement on the map - otherwise you'll sit there scratching your head wondering why it doesn't work (I may know this from experience...)! If you have trouble, there's a good Geotagging Group to help and also a good intro from Flickr's Blog.

If all went according to plan, you'll see your photos on the Flickr Map!

Back to the Photowalk
Like I said, this was a great event and I was happy to meet a lot of great people and have some great discussions along the way. It was particularly nice talking with Eric & Joe, photogs from the Cleveland area who spent the night before out until 4AM taking night shots of the city! Eric has a great Day/Night shot of the Roebling Bridge on his blog.

I also spent a lot of time speaking with Jim Talkington, who blogs over at ProPhotoLife. Jim is a great resource for anyone interested in the photo biz and is happy to help people get started. His blog contains a lot of helpful videos, so do check it out.

Finally, a big thanks to David Ziser for putting this toghether in Cincinnati. David is both an excellent photog and also a fine educator - not to mention a helluva nice guy! Check David's blog out at DigitalProTalk and also see his training videos over at KelbyTraining.com.

Images and GPS Data
My Photowalk Flickr Set is available, but if you're interested in higher quality versions and prints of my photos please check out the Smugmug gallery of the Cincinati Photowalk. You may also be interested in checking out the GPS Track Log of the walk; it won't sync directly with your photographs, but may be interesting to play around with. Enjoy!