Geo Labeling with the iPhone

I am now firmly back in New England from my trip out west. I am still struggling to catch up, so this week, I wanted to briefly discuss something I learned while away.

Morning Window, West Chesterfield, NH

For a number of years I have been compulsive about recording the GPS coordinates of my photographs. As I have often said, "there are just too many red barns in New England for my old brain to keep them all straight". My usual work flow includes continuously recording my position with a separate GPS tracker and then, using the GeoSetter program to merge that data with my images back in the studio. This has worked beautifully as long as I keep the clocks on the tracker and my camera synchronized. The tracker is particularly important when I am exploring unfamiliar areas, so you can imagine my annoyance when I discovered on the first day of our recent stay in Yellowstone that the tracker was NOT tracking. I tired everything but I couldn't get the device to find me. After I resisted the urge to heave the useless chunk of plastic into the gaping maw of Old Faithful, I started looking for alternatives.

Steve Jobs to the Rescue

Koredoko App

Then I recalled that my sparkling new iPhone 4s automatically records GPS coordinates on every picture. A quick search at the App Store revealed "Koredoko", a little app that displays the GPS coordinates of each picture in the camera roll and, when connected to the net, also shows the location on a Google map. It was quick, simple and FREE. Before I got out of the cabin door, I was back in business. All I had to do was remember to grab an iPhone
picture for every new location. At the end of the day I opened the images in
GeoSetter and manually assigned the coordinates to the images. It was a little more cumbersome to type in the coordinates, but the

GeoTracker Batching

process could be batched so I only had to input once for each new location. Done! This was not as simple and elegant as synching the images with the tracker, but it worked. I will try to get the Tracker back working, perhaps it will do better now that it is in familiar territory, but it is nice to know that I have a workable backup.

Cascade Creek, Grand Tetons, Wyoming

Many but not all phone have GPS capability, but if yours does, you may want to consider using it to help find that old red barn for another shoot.