Where in the World? – Geotagging on Flickr

One of the best things about Flickr is the ability to give detailed information about a shot contained in the Exif data as well as the date and time it was taken. But what about where it was taken?

Here’s a quick guide to Geotagging. It also deals with a case study involving a recent Flickr meet.

Flickr has a built in maps feature which can be found on each photos page on the right hand side. . Clicking this takes you to the Findr view and you can place the picture on a basic map quite easily. The only problem is when you try to use the Hybrid view quite often the satellite data is missing and all you see is lots of nothing!

I prefer to use a Google maps tagging feature which lets you place your photo on a map more accurately all within the main photo page. You can see my geotagged pics on a map right here.

Google Localize Bookmarklet

First up a Bookmarklet is like a regular browser bookmark but it contains code rather than just a web address. To get this one go to the Sumaato Labs page. Half way down is a green box… inviting titled “Don’t waste your time grab it here!”

The page shows how to install it for various browsers but essentially for Safari / Firefox, just drag it to the bookmarks bar and rename it something like “Geotag” and for IE users (why? – see here) right click and save it to your faves.

Now we are ready to tag some pics.

Go to the photo on Flickr you’re gonna tag and click the bookmark link you just made. You will then see the picture disappear and a Google maps window will appear. Click search and enter the location you want to find… be broad rather than too specific – we can fine tune later.

Here I am tagging this shot from a recent Flickr meet in Big Pit, which is in Blaenavon in South Wales.

Google then finds the location and I can fine tune the location by zooming in an dragging the pink (!) arrow to the required spot. I can use just a map, or the satellite view, or a mixture of the two.
Here’s the finished spot, where I ended up on my knees (nearly) in a puddle!

Hit save, job done. You get a “See where this picture was taken” link added to your description as well as the geo Longitude and latitude added to you tags.

Case Study – Flickr Photomeet Map

I regularly attend Photo meets with the popular local group WelshFlickrCymru. We have now begun assigning a tag for each photomeet, based on the location and date of the meet. Using Geotagged pictures we can also view the map for the photomeet using a couple of steps.

The map for the group is found on the main group page, just under the group name.
This is pretty fun in itself, you can view the photos from the group pool and their locations (if they’ve been geotagged of course… In this instance we want to see only photos from the recent photomeet, so I can search the map for the predefined search tag, which was posted in a recent group discussion, asking all attendants to tag their shots from the day.

I can then view the results from the photomeet, presented on a map! I can also sort by the most interesting shots of the day!

Here’s the final map of the whole photomeet, containing those shots that were Geotagged by the members and also the ones tagged with the photomeet tag.