Creating a map of photo locations

Many people have asked me how I created the locations map, so here's a brief tutorial.

The system I used involves storing the geo-data of each photograph on a publicly shared Google Spreadsheet and then using the Google Map api to generate the map.

The key is to ensure that your photographs and images are 'geotagged', that is they have longitude and latitude data in their EXIF file. You could achieve this by buying a geo-imaging system that fits onto the hotshoe of your DSLR such as this one:

Jobo Geo-Imaging System

but at £140, this is a bit of an investment.

A simpler, and cheaper (as in free) way is to use Google Earth and the freeware program Geotagger. This software is for Mac only, but if you are serious about photography, you already have a Mac, right?;-)

Once Geotagger is installed, make sure that it is added to the dock. When you run it, it won't do anything except open. Load up Google Earth and find the location where you took the photograph. Fortunately, churches are pretty easy to find from the air; other landmarks might need a bit more careful consideration. Double click the location to ensure that it is the centre of the screen and with Google Earth still open, open a Finder window and navigate to your photo. Highlight the photo and drag it unto the Geotagger icon on the dock (Geotagger must be running). The geo info is then added to the image's EXIF data.

To create the map, you will need to have a Google account. If you haven't got one, you can get one here.

You will then need a Google Maps api key and Google Spreadsheet api key.

Create a Spreadsheet for you data, including columns for Title, Description, Longitude, Latitude and Rank.

For the Description, I have html to link to the slide page, with a tag to show the thumbnail in the format of:

<a href="http://www.fotochurch.co.uk/Yorkshire/A-E/slides/aberford-T.html">
<img height=50 src="http://www.fotochurch.co.uk/Yorkshire/A-E/thumbs/Aberford-T.jpg"></img></a>

The Rank is just a numbered list, assigning a number to each image for the list.

You may need to change the longitude and latitude to decimal and there are many tools on the internet that will do this for you. Just remember that if the image is west of the meridian (as many are in the UK and North America), you will need to add a minus sign in front of the longitude.

Creating the code for the Map is, as you would imagine, highly complex. Fortunately, there is an excellent online tool available HERE. If you follow the instructions on this site and complete all the relevant boxes, you will be able to generate html code that can be used on your web page to show a location map of you photos.