Maculous > Geotagging Photos on the Mac

As a computer nerd who has been born again in the spirit of high technology it is natural and normal that I would wish to geek out at every opportunity. I also love digital photography.

Recently I bought a GPS trip navigator for our pickup truck. It did not take very long before I put GPS and Camera together and came up with a way to make my photo habit more geeky. So I have started geotagging my photos.

I use Canon cameras and so far they have no support at all for GPS connection or geotagging. So I carry a GPS with me and set the time in the camera to match the time shown by the GPS. Previously I used my Garmin nüvi, purchased orginally for navigation in a vehicle. But it has a poor battery life once disconnected from the vehicle power system and put in a pocket, so today I bought a Garmin Edge 305, designed for use by cyclists, but good for my purposes because it has a long battery life and it stores track data.

I recently discovered PhotoLinker software and now I can’t wait to take more photos and geotag them because this software is very well implemented. It shows you your tracks on a map, it can download track data directly from at least some GPS models (works on my Garmin units) and once you add photo files it shows them on your map so you can verify the accuracy of the timestamp comparison before writing the EXIF data back to your files. PhotoLinker is software designed for ease of use and a logical, intuitive workflow.

I’m using SmugMug, Flickr and Picasaweb to host my geotagged photos. Of the three I like the map view on SmugMug very much more. In fact I like everything about SmugMug more than I do Flickr or Picasaweb.

So if you love digital photography and you own a Mac I suggest this plan to get started with geotagging.

• Get a Garmin handheld GPS
• Download the trial version of PhotoLinker
• Create an account on SmugMug to show off your geotagged photos