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In days past, photographers had to rely on their memory to answer the question “where did I take this shot?”. Not so any more. Geotagging is fast becoming popular in the days of digital photography. By definition, Geotagging is the process of adding a form of geospatial geographical identification metadata to your images. It can also be added to other media like websites or RSS feeds. This metadata almost always consists of latitude and longitude coordinates; although it can sometimes also include things like altitude, bearing, or even location names depending on how specific you want to get.

Geotagging can also be useful if you are looking for location-specific information. For example, you are trying to find images taken near Red Rock Canyon. You simply enter the latitude and longitude coordinates into a Geotagging-enabled image search engine. There you go! These same search engines can also be used to locate location-based news, websites and more.

Previously, if someone wanted to tag their photos, if was pretty much a pain in the butt. It meant going through Yahoo Maps or Google Earth and finding the coordinates and marking where we took our shot. Thankfully, newer solutions have come out to get rid of this tiresome step in the process. One current fad is to install a GPS unit right on your camera. This can be done either before or after market. One solution that I consider rather innovative is ATP’s GPS Photofinder (approx. $100). It’s stand-alone and way simple to use.  It tracks and logs up to 550 hours of GPS data and then uses its SD slot to automatically add the geotags to the JPEG images on the card. Down side, it doesn’t work with CompactFlash, nor does it recognize or do anything if you shoot RAW images. (But then again… they are a killer on space anyway).

Even popular photo sites such as Flickr are jumping on the bandwagon by promoting use of support for geographic information in the picture properties posted on their site. And earlier this year, when Nokia introduced their new phone, the Nokia N96, they made sure to mention that it would utilize the phone’s internal A-GPS and camera to add geotag metadata into each photograph.

So, if you’re looking to do something new with your photography… or if you’re just tired of the “where was this shot taken?” question a few years later when the ‘ole memory starts to fade a bit then geotagging just might be worth exploring.

Read [About.com]

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