iPhoto caches EXIF data….

My wife and I were given a small Garmin etrex VISTA HCx, handheld GPS unit and that got us started on GeoCaching. Go to GeoCaching.org to learn more about this hobby.

GeoCaching is really great fun to my wife and I and I am sure that many of you enjoy the sport as well. While out and about GeoCaching I do take pictures and this is when it struck me.

If I have a GPS track of where I’ve been and I have photos, couldn’t I bring the two together?

The simple answer is, yes of course, you can! I picked HoudahGeo for the task, as it had been shown on ScreenCastsOnline with Don McAllister.

I was happy to get started right away and picked my last imported event from iPhoto. HoudahGeo confirmed that all was well, but in iPhoto the location data didn’t show.

Searching the web I found out that iPhoto caches the EXIF data of photos, so even if you GeoTagged them with HoudahGeo the data might not show. So my workflow from now on has to be: First add geotags, then import into iPhoto. Not too bad, however I would love to know whether there is some sort of command that would force iPhoto to reload the EXIF data for images.

The next problem was how to share this data? I have been using Flickr.com for years and I naturally want to keep using it.

My first export from iPhoto to Flickr however left me rather sad, as my photos weren’t placed on a map automatically. It happens that Flickr does take all our privacies very seriously and importing location data from EXIF is disabled by default. Once enabled it works like a charm and my pictures show up on a map automatically, together with a note as to where they were taken.

When geotagging images via HoudahGeo you need to ensure that your camera’s clock and that of your GPS unit are in-sync. Your GPS unit gets its time from the GPS satellites, your camera you need to adjust.

If you know they are out of sync, HoudaGeo will let you adjust them, but you will need to state how out of sync items are. And of course, if you take images in the woods, there is no telling how accurate the geotags will be.

So my big thanks go to the US government, who not only enable me to enjoy my favorite photo, but also to geotag my images easily.

And besides Flickr there are lots of other really fun uses of GeoTagged photos… I am just afraid that I will now start to seriously go through lots and lots more batteries on my GPS unit. Time to buy some more rechargeable batteries!