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I am preparing for a fantastic 7 day cruise with my wife and family to several ports of call in Alaska. In getting ready for this I have been expanding my camera gear so I can take a true photo vacation. So far I have upgraded my Canon 10D Digital SLR to a Canon 40D with a 28-135mm Image Stabilized lens, and added a Canon 100mm Macro and Sigma 10-20mm Wide Angle lens to my bag. Before I go I have a long lens to add and a flash, and by then a new big bag also, but in getting all this together, and planning the most well documented vacation I have ever taken, I decided to check into one other detail, GeoTagging.

What is GeoTagging
GeoTagging is the process of either manually adding, or using GPS to add location data to photos or other media. In my case, I want to use a GPS unit to log my movements in Alaska, and then when I get back to the cabin at night, I want to download my photos and have that GPS data attached to the EXIF data on the photos so my family and friends can see where the photos were taken when going through my vacation photos.

What’s Involved?
Well, of course there is some hardware involved. I am assuming you already have the camera, and it really doesn’t matter what brand or kind of camera you use as long as it’s digital and saves in a common image format that supports EXIF data, usually JPG or one of the brand specific RAW formats. For my tests I tried a Sony DSC-W50 point-and-shoot and a Canon 40D Digital SLR. For the GPS I chose a Garmin eTrex Legend HCx, courtesy of Best Buy, retailing for $199. You don’t have to use a handheld GPS either, you can use a Data Logger GPS device, which is a GPS without a screen or any user features that simply logs to a file..these start at around $60.

Finally, you need some software, I tried two programs, for Mac I tried GPSPhotoLinker and for PC I tried GeoSetter. There are quite a few programs out there that can do this. If you want to do it manually, it can be done natively in Flickr and can also be done with a combination of Picasa and Google Earth.

How Does it Work?
Well, the manual way is simple, it takes the general area you select and writes a latitude and longitude to the EXIF data and you are done, the batch process is a little different.

When the GPS is set to record a track, or your progress as you move, it’s recorded to a text file in a format called GPX. This file is simply a long list of latitude and longitudes that are time/date stamped. The software takes the time/date stamp on the photo, finds either a match or a before and after location and makes a best guess as to your location and writes it to the EXIF data in the photo. Pretty simple stuff really, all you have to do is use the program to take the two data points and merge them.

Results?
Unfortunately, my initial results were 50/50. On the Mac with GPSPhotoLinker, I successfully merged the location details and they were written to the file, and Flickr even sees them in the EXIF data, but it did not automatically locate them on a map. After I had uploaded the files and had no luck with finding them on my map, I found a setting in Flickr that you have to set to make it attempt to auto-detect location information when you upload photos. I set that, but it was not retroactive, so the photos did not show. After I took a few photos with the 40D and used GeoSetter and uploaded to Flickr, they worked perfectly. I decided to delete the original photos and re-upload them from the Mac, and flickr did detect the location data and all was good. So now my test results are 100%, it works great on Mac and PC. The resulting test photos can be seen in my GeoTagTest Flickr Set. You can also view them in a Map View.

Final Thoughts?
Well, I have a few. For one, I made sure to get a GPS that has a removable media slot, in my case a MicroSD card. I picked up a 2GB card to replace the anemic 128MB that came with it for $19.99 at Circuit City. Now I can store a crap load of logs if I need to. Also, the batteries on these puppies promise 25 hours of usage, well keep spare batteries, you don’t want to lose good data you will want later.

Make it a process, if you are going to bother bringing the GPS, get in the habit of turning it on when you are shooting photos, it will log when it’s on so you don’t have to keep it on the entire time, just while you are shooting. Remembering to turn it off when you aren’t shooting will extend that battery life also of course.

Pick a workflow that works for you, I found two nice free apps, and I am sure I will look at plenty more, but do your research. The process is simple, it’s easy to do and adds a cool element to your photo gallery, so make it easy on yourself by refining your process so you don’t get out of the habit of doing it for no good reason.

As a prequel to my soon to be posted review of the Magellan Roadmate 1200 GPS, and coming off of two road trips Dawngrrl and I took over the past 5 days, it occurs to me that it’s nearly impossible to be lost in 2008 as long as you are equipped with inexpensive and highly available technology products.

It’s kind of crazy if you think about how far it’s come. In 1997, a little over 10 years ago, the GPS unit was about 12″x12″x4″, weighed in at about 5lbs and displayed a very difficult to use pair of coordinates for latitude and longitude.

Fast forward to this year, and on our road trip we had four of such devices with us the smallest of which was embedded in my cellular phone. A chip I would be surprised if it was larger than a dime.

With this gear in mind, I wonder if it’s possible for a person to be hopelessly lost in 2008. The really interesting part is the change in your frame of mind when you travel. We left to drive all the way around Olympia National Forest and didn’t bring a map or any directions to where we were going. Let’s start with a little background on the pre-trip ritual.

We began our trip decision making process with a combination of Google Maps, Google Earth, Weather.com and Flickr. We knew we wanted to take photos, so we started by looking on Google Maps for towns and parks located along the path we had decided to take. With those in hand we turned to Flickr.

Many people might not think to do this, but if you are scouting a possible vacation spot, even one abroad, go to Flickr and search! You will quickly find the most scenic and beautiful places as they are obviously the most commonly photographed.

Once you have done that you can check each place for potential weather problems and peek Google Earth to see just how big the towns really are.

With a list of Port Angeles, Lake Crescent, Ruby Beach, Amanda Park and Astoria Oregon in mind, we set out on Friday late afternoon and typed in our first destination into the TomTom One XL conveniently stuck to the window via suction cup. It calculated our route and we were on our way.

Approaching Port Angel that evening, Dawngrrl grabbed her Internet enabled HTC Mogul Windows Mobile Smartphone and quickly found a hotel in Port Angel and we altered our destination to it’s address.

I won’t bore you with the details of our entire trip, but we were able to locate scenic areas, scout them, and drive straight to them the entire weekend. Not only were we not lost, we were so enabled that we drove out across the state with zero trepidation and the utmost confidence that we could find whatever we wanted and navigate there as simple as you could ever hope.

If you have been under a rock, you don’t know that as of yesterday my family and I live in Seattle Washington. More specifically, we live in Redmond Washington at the moment.

Get Where You Need to Go
We landed at about 7 PM local time last night and quickly collected our baggage and picked up our rental car. Being an ultra techno geek, I had already pre-programmed the address to the corporate housing into the TomTom One XL and stored it in my camera bag. I popped it out, plugged it into the cigarette lighter and stuck the suction cup on the windshield.

Once we had left the garage, I pressed the screen, selected navigate to, and pushed "home" on the touch screen. It took it about 5 seconds and my route was planned and a British woman was telling me where to go. We drove all twenty miles without incident and landed exactly where we needed to be to collect the key. After dropping off an extremely travel weary cat, we needed to get to a store quickly to get some cat supplies and groceries.

Enter Smartphone
If you have a phone running Windows Mobile, I hope you are using Live Search. I had installed previously and absolutely love it. I set the local city to Redmond Washington and searched Fred Meyer. I entered the address on the TomTom and less than 5 miles away, again we drove straight to it.

This morning it took us to Starbucks and tonight we added a trip to the Apple Store, one more trip to Fred Meyer and home again. If you stop to think about how far we have come, it’s truly amazing. We come to a city as large as Seattle. I have never been here in my life. I can drive straight where I want to go every time and I never get lost. It’s like I know the area already. Amazing times, don’t you think?

I was pretty frustrated when I started playing with my new TomTom One XL and found out that TomTom doesn’t like Verizon. They state no support. With a Bluetooth enabled smartphone with high speed data services, and a TomTom One XL that supports them, I was near returning it to the store.

I am pleased to say that I avoided that with a little research and some patience.

After some fiddling, and some searching, I found settings that do work for Windows Mobile on Verizon with tethered Internet support.

1. Phone selection – other
2. Carrier selection – other
3. Access point – vzw3g
4. username – (phone number)@vzw3g.com
5. password – vzw
6. number to dial – #777
7. No scripts

The setup is pretty painless, first pair your devices, then when it asks you to set up your wireless connection, wait forever while it tries, then when it fails, select the US, select other for the Phone Model and Carrier, then use the connection settings above.

I tested it with the weather and software downloading features and it worked like a charm.