GPS, or not?

Yeah I know... I’ve been absent for awhile. Work has been consuming me somewhat, but I’m on the road to re-focusing my life a bit. I’ve covered what has happened at work, so I’m not going to re-visit it. Suffice to say, if you let work control your life, it will.

So for the sake of not letting that happen, I’ve completely taken this weekend off to do very little. We did go to the mall yesterday however. When I take photos, I eventually upload some of them to Flickr. That’s all well and good. The only issue I have is the geo-tagging of the photos. I like to place them on the map in Flickr so that people can kind of see where the photo was taken. It’s an approximation of course. And sometimes, as was the case with Olympic National Park, where you are on an undocumented trail (as far as Flickr is concerned), it’s difficult to actually place the photo. What you end up doing is to place the entire set ... somewhere on the map. In reality, each photo has it’s own unique location as many were taken while on the way to see something else. It would be nice to actually be able to see, within a few meters, where the photo was taken.

So, I’ve been doing some research on how to do that. Some GPS units will connect to a Nikon D200, if you have the right cables. Supposedly, the camera will be aware of the GPS being connected and will tell me this by a solid “GPS” indicator on the camera. Then, when I take a photo, the location will supposedly be recorded in the EXIF data within the photo, which also is sent to Flickr when I upload a photo. That SHOULD do it for me.

The complicated part is finding the right cables, and GPS units that are compatible with my camera. I’ll let you know what I find out. It would be totally cool to have a map of each photo along a hiking trail, similar to bread crumbs of where the photos were taken.

And speaking of my D200, it’s still in the shop.

Other news...

We went to a nice restaurant Friday night. It’s called Chikurin, located in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Actually, a former co-worker took me there awhile ago, and I liked it. Then, last Friday night, Kent was on his way home from Salt Lake City. He stopped by work around 5:30, and I decided to take him there for dinner to see how he liked it. The food was good. I love their curry’s. The only downside was that some guy kept glaring at us like he wanted to do us physical damage. Kent mentioned it after we left. I didn’t notice it, but it made him uncomfortable.

If anyone has experience with hooking up a GPS to a Nikon camera, I would love to hear your suggestions. Oh, and finally, I’ve joined the Connecticut Flickr Meet Up Group (thanks to James for suggesting it!). It’s a group of photographers in Connecticut who meet monthly at a different place for photography. It should be fun. I have a birthday party to go to next Saturday, but I hope to make it for my first meet up with them.

Have a nice day everyone!