Hey y'all! How is everyone doing this week? Me? Pretty good. Hey have you ever looked at one of your old photo's and said "Hey that's cool but where did I take it?" Me too. I sometimes can sort of tell the area but not the precise place I took a shot. This is where GPS (Global Positioning System) comes into play. Being able to add the GPS coordinates to your photographs in the metadata is a great way to find those locations that you can't remember. But how do we get those mysterious numbers on our photographs and how do we use them? Thats what we are going to talk about this week.
How do I get the GPS data? Well with technology being what it is you would think that this is the simple
part. Well not really. Although a few camera's have the ability to get the GPS data and put right on your photo most do not. I think that there are devices that you can hook up to some camera's but they are expensive. There is however a few couple of ways to put the GPS data on your images. The first one requires your camera to have bluetooth capabilities . If it does you should be able to sync your camera to your mobile device to get these GPS coordinates added to your photo at the instant you take it. It then has this info burned into the file and follows the file where ever it goes. All you have to do is before your outing sync your camera and mobile device and you will get them the rest of the
day. You may have to go through your camera's phone app to sync them together and there may be a setting on your camera to allow the information to go to your camera from your phone but it can be done and is pretty easy. Mine was a little difficult to set up at first but now that its set up , its easy all I have to do is choose which camera my Sony crops sensor camera or my Full frame Sony and sync and its done. The other way is to take a photo with your mobile device when you get to the site that you take photos at. When you get all of your photo's imported you can sync the metadata from the iPhone to the rest of the photo's that were taken in that area and you will have the GPS data. The only problem with this is that you have to remember to take a mobile device photo at each different location that you go to in that day so you can get the GPS data for that location. Either way you have to remember to either sync your phone to your camera or sync a phone shot with the regular photo's in Lightroom.
So how do I used the GPS data now that I have it on my images metadata? If you're a Lightroom user like most of us are you just have to open up the Map Module and your photo's will be shown on the map where they were taken. There is lots of things that you can do in the Map module but for me it's just getting the location of things. This is a neat feature that really doesn't cost you anymore money. Something new to try if you have never done it before. So until next week get out and shoot and note your location with GPS data.