Ontic Oren

There is something about seeing a map of my photos that floats my boat. If it floats yours too, and you want to know how I do it, you’re in luck!

1. you gotta grab that GPS data. I need a small device, reasonably durable, good battery life, and Mac compatible. Wintec WBT-201 fits that to a tee. You can see an earlier post on my one aborted attempt to look at a different device. The WBT-201 is so simple, this step is done. Turn it on. That’s it.
2. Take pictures. Keep in mind that you will be syncing the GPS and photos based on time. Make sure to set your camera clock accuratly. Instead of messing with timezones, I’ve taken to just setting the camera to GMT. When I don’t, for some reason I can NEVER get the GPS data and photos to line up.
3. Import and tag your photos.
   1. First use HoudahGPS to get the data off the WBT-201. Free, works over bluetooth perfectly.
   2. Merge the photos and GPS. I use ImageIngester, which also takes care of getting the files off the memory card. (If you import with some other tool, you can also use the excellent HoudahGeo.) In ImageIngester, go to tools->GPS, “read GPS data”, set timezone (London UTC 0 for me), check “enable GPS tagging”, and select close. The import, and it will merge in to any file - CR2 in my case
4. Upload to a site that supports geotagging, such as flickr or smugmug.

That’s it.  The trick, of course, is to remeber to BRING the damn GPS device, and TURN IT ON.  I’m not so good at that.

Back from a week in Maui. Minimal email, some reading, some being a bum, and some photography.

Saw whales plus waterfalls and occasional fauna.

The whale shots were pure luck. We took a tour with Pacific Whale Foundation. It was OK, saw some whales in the distance, got lucky and saw dolphins swimming with some whales (bad photos), but overall it was a bit disappointing. Until the LAST 5 min. I was just sitting there, gazing out when this guy above does his thing right in front of me, maybe 300 yards away. So lucky. Still could have used more lens.

This weekend was the kickoff for the Amgen Tour of California. I’m lucky enough to live <1 mile from the start line of the Prologue and took advantage of the situation to take a few pictures. The prologue is a 2.1 mile time trial through downtown Palo Alto and Stanford. They riders had a mostly straight route, with two turns at the beginning and a 180 sweeper at the end. They ride alone, one every minute. The course is ~ 4 min total.

I arrived an hour before the start, and positioned myself right at the exit of the second turn. The corner was in shade, with great even light even at 1pm in the afternoon. I set the shutter to 1/200 sec in the hope of some motion blur, and tried my hand at panning. I used a polarizer later in the data as a ND filter to keep the aperature open and help blur the background. Pictures link to larger versions and the full gallery.

Great, you’ve got a bunch of photos. I’ve got 15,790 (who’s counting?). What do you do with them?

For years I’ve posted them to the web. Works great, but darn if people aren’t analog junkies. After coming home from the most recent wedding, Olivia and I decided to give the bride and groom a photo book as part of the wedding gift. There are a ton of different sites for doing POD (print-on-demand) photo books. Overwhelming really. I decided on SharedInk.com after researching, and especially after this article at Nikonians.org. Requested access to the pro-program, and away we go.In the process of creating our first book, I ran into a few various “learning experiences”.

I can’t escape without a mini-review however. Sharedink is for people who know what they are doing. It is not a replacement for iPhoto. If you can’t use photoshop, stay away. Sharedink will tell you how many inches and recommended DPI the page is, the gutter size, and that’s it. You’re on your own. All the rope in the world to hang yourself. You upload (preferably via FTP) a ZIP of JPGs. Their website is almost a joke - it’s Web 1.0 old skool, but not in the cool way. It’s fast enough, and it works.

The book, is awesome. First, I want to call out the cover and binding. It’s a thing of beauty. Beautiful linen, a real hardcover book binding. It’s basically perfect, there’s not at thing more I would ask for. I read online all the time that people find this the #1 issue in books. I wouldn’t know - this is the only book I’ve ordered so far, and it’s ideal. The interior quality is wonderful as well. The paper is thick (so thick the book won’t lie open. Check out the last photo below - I had to bend the book >180 degrees to get it to stay for a few seconds). The printing is really nice - sometimes a bit dark, sometimes a bit light, never as good as a inkjet, but good enough that I’m ordering many more!

What did I learn?

• You must consider the righ/left page interaction. On a few pages, I have one photo on each, with one slightly taller or shorter than the other. It looks dumb.
• A corollary: on my 8″ (tall) x 11″ (wide) book, the vertical dimension is MUCH more noticible. Play with the width, but make sure the vertical stuff aligns.
• Second corollary: Careful how you bleed. Many of my pictures were wider than the page, so I bled off the left and right, and left a bit of white on the top and bottom. If there’s <0.5″ on the top or bottom of the page, it just looks like I made a mistake in printing. Interestingly, the same is NOT true for the vertical pictures, probably because they have more whitespace on the sides than the horizontals do on the top and bottom.
• 20 pages = 40 sides. As you go through and lay things out, you begin to feel like maybe it’s all repettive, and try and come up with new designs. Don’t. Pick a few, and use them. It’s OK to repeat. By all means, be creative. Go crazy (some of those worked out great!) But don’t do it because you think the book will be boring, it won’t be.
• That linen picks up dirt! I ruined this first book in <10 min. Water, a touch of grease, anything, the Linen seems to suck it up. This spot is after we tried to clean it up. The cover has a few spots too now. Just be careful.
• I love how the dual-page spreads work out! Full bleed really works well, and being slightly asymmetrical really pays off. As with anything, don’t overuse it. And be aware that the middle part will dissapear. In this picture, there are 5 bridesmaids, but only 4 show up in the spread!

Good luck! This was super fun, the results are great, the costs not unreasonable. Maybe after 5 years I’ll finally do something about my own wedding photos!