This is a post I have been meaning to write up for a while, and have been putting off as I think it could get quite big, quite quickly. That’s no excuse though, so I thought I’d split it up into several posts in order to keep things easier for me to write, and for you to read. Without further ado, here’s part 1. I’ll keep links to the following parts as they get posted below:
Firstly, a brief introduction. I like to take photos, lots of them in fact. So far this year I’m up to a couple of hundred shots that I want to keep. I also like having things neat, tidy and in their place, and this applies equally to my iPhoto library too, which is growing at a steady rate of knots and currently stands at about 3,500 photos taken over 3 or 4 years. Not loads, but enough to start losing nice shots in which is an ever increasing problem as more photos get added.
Second, I’m on a Mac. Sorry PC users, that’s the way it is round here and the way it will continue to be. That’s not to say that any of the processes that I through or tips that I throw out aren’t relevant, I just won’t know the best way of doing on a PC, sorry.
Third, these processes/this workflow is not intended to be ‘better’ than anyone elses, or provide any advantages over your own - it’s just mine. If you find any of the tips helpful then I’m really happy; if not then no big deal, hopefully you got to feel smug as your own way of doing things must suit you better. On with the show…
This post is going to deal with everything that I do at the time of taking a photo (with the exception of actually taking it, as I’m no pro, so don’t really have a leg to stand on when it comes to ‘real’ photography!). As I explained before, organisation of the photos back in my library is important to me, so whenever I’m out with a camera I like to mentally record what’s going on around me, and more specifically where I am geographically so that I’m able to tag the photo in iPhoto and ‘geotag’ the photos when they get back to my mac. It’s the geotagging part of processing the images that I found especially interesting, as I find playing around with the photos, showing them to friends/family etc. when placed on a maps such as Google Maps or Google Earth.
The basics - it really makes your life easier to have your camera setup properly before taking any photos, mainly in respect to timezone and current time. Some digital cameras have both settings, but all have an option to change the current date and time. As this information is embedded into the photograph and is used when referencing the photos against a location at a certain point in time (more on this later), it’s pretty essential that it’s as accurate as you can get it.
In order to geotag your photo further down the track when you get home, clearly you’ll need to know the location of the photo. There’s essentially two ways of doing this - using a track log from a GPS of some kind, or remembering (roughly) where you are in relation to your surroundings to then get a more precise location when you get home. Now, you may think I’m talking complete crap here - of course you remember where you took a photo, right? Well, that’s true, but as time goes by it will become harder to remember where less memorable photos were taken, which for me is one of the benefits. of geotagging your photos- so that you can come back to them at a future date, and not have to rack your brain as to where it was taken.
So, having been on a three month tour of South East Asia, after you return home one beach pretty much looks like another. Having some kind of hard record as to where you where and when means that you can Google (or search on Google Earth) that place, find the location and geotag that photo. There are of course limitless ways you can do this; but for me noting down a date and place on paper has got to be one of the easiest. Alternatively, get a map (tourist, something more accurate, guide book, whatever) of where you have been and briefly annotate it with dates and times.
If you want a digital way of doing it, many digital cameras (well, from my experience every Canon I have had) offer a feature where you can annotate any image with a brief audio recording. I’ve yet to use this, but that could also prove very useful for tagging later down the track if you have a large enough memory card. Finally, logging your rough journey around a city with times, street names etc. around the time that you shoot using an internet enabled mobile phone, and a service like Backpack, would also do the trick.
The idea is to build up some references to know where you have been and when, so that upon returning to process your images you can apply relevant tags, descriptions and location info. Whether you do that in your head or in some other form is up to you. For me it depends on the length of time between taking the photo and when I’m likely to be processing it on my computer - the longer this is the more likely I am to write something down.
In addition to this, if you are serious about getting location metadata attached to your photos (as well as viewing tracks of your travels/ski runs/walks/bikes etc) then investing in a cheap GPS is a must. You can pick up something like a Garmin etrex fairly cheaply on ebay (~£50 in the UK), or for something for photography specific, check out the Sony GPS-CS1, and my review of it here. The GPS will log your position every few seconds to a simple text file which you can copy back to your Mac when you get home, and you can then convert the file to something that would be viewable on Google Earth. By matching the location recorded at the time a photo was taken, software can then embed the location (latitude, longitude, city, state etc, and possibly even altitude) into the photo’s EXIF headers.
In the real world, it’s a combination of both of the above that works for me. Having the GPS on and attached to part of my backpack for times when I really won’t know where I have been that day, as well as mentally or otherwise recording places and times that I took photos both work for me for Geotagging my photos further down the track. In the next few posts I’ll cover how to actually use the information that you have recorded to get the precise location embedded in your photos as easily as possible, the way I like to tag photos in iPhoto, sharing them online with this information using Flickr, and other ways of showing off your photo creations to the world.
I’m aware that some of the content in this post might seem a bit, well, obvious. I really wanted to go over the first steps you might need to take in order to start tagging your photos more completely, but if you’ve found it annoying or wish to let me know any criticisms you may have, please do so in the comments!
To explain a bit more, the 
