For most people the fun thing about geotagging, or adding the gps coordinates to a photo is simply because you can. But there are some practical uses. I have a client that hopes to create a database of their projects around the world. In this database they might store information and names of staff that are working on certain project, the area that the project centers around, they might even list the some of the ethnocultural groups in the projects area of influence. This type of application of geotagged photos is new (at least to me). Up till now the only real reason to geotag a photo was because we could, or to show friends and family where you had traveled on your last vaction. My client for this next trip want their images geotagged. So even though my client does not wish to have their name in my blog they have granted me the right to post a few select images and show where these images were taken. To do this I will be using my iphone 3gs, an iPhone app called Geotag Photos by Jindrich Sarson (not very creative, but descriptive) and then on my MacBook Pro some software called GPSPhotoLinker by Early Innovations as well as Lightroom and of course my Canon 5DMKII.

There are many Geologging apps for the iPhone, I chose Geotag Photos because of one important feature that I only found with this application. It is the ability to file share the GPX file. A GPX file is the file that all geo-logging software creates that contains the navigational coordinates and timestamps.

There are plenty of blogs that explain how-to geotag your photos. This is not new. So I will abbreviate my process for you. The in short it goes something like this:

You open up Geotag Photos on your iPhone, you sink your camera’s clock to the time in the application. Geo-tagged photo gives you options on how often it will takes coordinate readings. I set mine to every two minutes. It saves a little bit of battery life and I don’t think I’ll be moving around that much. Then I head out and start shooting. At the end of the day, I return and download my photos into Lightroom as I would normally do. While my photos are being downloaded and converted to DNG files, I open up iTunes and sync my iPhone. In iTunes I go to the image of my phone on the left sidebar and then click the “App” tab for the phone. In the App window, scroll down to the bottom and you will find a small window that allows file sharing for certain apps. Geotag Photos is one of those applications.  I then locate the GPX file that I’ve named in Geotag Photos and I simply drag it to the desktop. At this point I open up GPSPhotoLinker. This is the software that will merge the GPX data into the DNG files. I take the GPX file that I saved to the desktop and drag it into GPSPhotoLinker. Then I find the folder with my newly downloaded DNG files and drag those two GPSPhotoLinker as well. Then I hit the batch process button and all of the navigational data in the GPX file is now embedded into the DNG photos. At this point it’s just a matter of opening Lightroom and selecting all the photos that I just downloaded, right click, select “read metadata” of the photos and then Lightroom updates the the new metadata. The cool think about using GPSPhotoLinker is it not only adds the navigational coordinated, it also adds the city, state and country when the image was taken in to the IPTC fields.

There are plenty of options for geo-logging applications and desktop apps that will sync your GPX files back to your photographs. But the process remains pretty much the same. Until Canon comes up with a GPS embedded in their DSL are this cumbersome process will remain the same.

You will notice the photos that I shot today have a small Google type pin icon in the lower right-hand corner. This is from a very clever plug-in by Dave Stivens.  If you click on the icon a Google map appears in a lightbox style window. I love the effect and how unobtrusive it is. The problem is this plug-in conflicts with my other plug-in that I use to get the same effect with most of my photos posted in my blog. So after a few days, I will disable Stiven’s plug-in. Unless someone can figure out what the conflict is and we’re able to fix it.

I’ll be posting my itinerary on Friday. I hope to be able to post photos now and again and reflect on my trip while I’m gone, but I’m not sure what kind of Internet access will have available.

Related posts

• South Sumatra #1 (8)
• Review: Jobo’s PhotoGPS (48)
• Wallpaper: September 2010 (2)
• Wallpaper: August 2010 (7)
• Wallpaper July 2010 (4)

A photo essay by John Stanmeyer about Tom Little and NOOR.

(Click the photo to go to the story at VII)

This post is a little out of the ordinary for me. But I think my readers will still be interested in the photos and the plea associated with it is important. By now, you’ve heard of the killings in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban executed 10 Christian aid workers for no apparent reason other than the fact they were Christians that might be sharing their faith. The leader of the 10 was an eye surgeon named Tom Little, who had given 30 years of service to the people of Afghanistan. This is a real shame. It’s an insult to Islam and goes a long way at damaging any relationships that are being built between the two faiths. This hits home because I know several employees with this NGO. I did not have the privileged to meet Tom Little, but I wish I had. Yes, it was no secret, they were Christians. The fact is, it was their faith that motivated them to spend years helping the blind see in Afghanistan.

All these doctors and workers were associated with the National Organization of Ophthalmic Rehabilitation (NOOR) Eye Care, a program of IAM. NOOR does nothing but good for the people of Afghanistan in northern Pakistan. Their doctors and workers preform cataract surgeries, make glasses and help people see. According to Wikipedia:

In 2009, NOOR treated 179 000 patients and performed 11,000 surgeries. In addition, Ministry of Public Health eye hospitals supported by NOOR saw 157 000 patients and performed nearly 7,000 surgeries. It dispensed over 17,000 pairs of glasses, and 359,000 bottles of eyedrops. NOOR has a particular emphasis on training and it runs a three-year ophthalmology residency programme. Almost all ophthalmologists and all ophthalmic technicians in Afghanistan have been trained by NOOR.

There are reports that people who had been blind from birth and in their 50s given their site back by these doctors. Yet, the Taliban for some reason fear them enough to kill them.

This is exactly the reason why I am a part of the International Guild of Visual Peacemakers. Our goal is to draws photographers from all cultures, ethnicity and beliefs and to help breakdown religious hate and cultural stereotypes and biases that divide us. We want to see the type of hate that killed these 10 people and so many others every day, destroyed and replaced with compassion and appreciation. Maybe this is too big a job and can never be done. Probably so. But it shouldn’t stop us from trying and at least making a positive mark on the world. I am thrilled that John Stanmeyer of VII was able to document Tom Little’s work before he was murdered. It needed to be told.

If you agree with me and feel this madness has to stop, please join me and support IGVP. If you are a photographer, consider joining and being apart of this important community. IGVP is days away from going live. Simply click this link HERE and sign up to be notified when the site is online and then you can be apart of something very important.

Related posts

• What some Muslims want to tell you. (38)
• Video; The daunting future? (11)
• The Photo Essay: Give it Your Best Shot (33)
• The Last Lantern Maker (29)
• Multimedia: Wasim The Varanasi Sari Maker (4)

I am with my wife and daughter on a working vacation…of sorts. Marco Ryan of Focus for Humanity fame, is hosting our family  here in the wonderful land of the pharaohs. Marco and I are doing a “recce” as he says, for a possible Egypt photo tour and workshop.  There certainly is no dearth of photo opportunities here. The people are photogenic, the buildings are ancient and beautiful and the culture rich.

Today we became true tourist and went off to the pyramids.  It reminded me of the Taj Mahal in that there were tourist literally crawling over each other for a quick snap of the Sphinx. But, it was one of those places you check off your list to see. Not much culture (unless you like hawkers and tourist) but worth seeing.

People were literally crawling over each other to shoot a picture of the Sphinx.

Trying to get just a clean snap of the Sphinx without people was a challenge.

But with the help of the clone tool and a high vantage point, anything is possible.

I’ll check in when I can, but honestly, this is mainly family time. So bear with me, I’ll post when I have the inkling. Until then, go read a good blog and for heaven’s sake; get out and take a picture!

Related posts

• No related posts.

I’m going to go down a bit of a rat hole. I’m even going to give it a name: value.

You’ll already be wondering why a post that begins “I’m going down a bit of a rat hole” might have anything to do with Focus for Humanity – a newly launched foundation aimed at giving grants to aspiring photographers and to help under-funded NGOs afford world class photographers  – but stay with me for a couple of paragraphs and hopefully you’ll see why.

I’ve never quite understood why photographers struggle to sell the value that they bring to organizations. Well perhaps it would be more accurate to say I have never really understood why organizations won’t pay for the value that photographers can bring to their organizations.

That’s value with a capital “V” by the way – the intrinsic benefit that we recognize that great images can bring to a brand – and also value with a small “v” – because I think most photographers are undervalued and charge too little for what they do.

Why is it that an organization will pay an IT technician $70 an hour or a lawyer $200 an hour but not pay a photographer $100 an hour?

Perhaps it is because there is an association between complexity or certain required qualifications or proven experience and a market price.

Or perhaps it is that, for a profession such as a photographer, the need for creative vision, emotional intelligence and expressive story telling often outweighs the need for bachelor, graduate or professional qualifications. Yet because those qualifications are optional it becomes – especially for the uninformed buyer – more difficult to arrive at that market price or critically, to measure the value delivered.

It is of course further complicated by the proliferation and pervasiveness of digital cameras that mean many organizations don’t even to begin to create a business case for an assignment because its just too hard, right? Instead that same organization will thrust a Canon Ixus into the hands of the nearest intern and say, “get on with it”. (though I’ve nothing against Interns or Canon Ixus’!)

Now let’s add a layer of complexity. Let’s go further down that rat hole.

Imagine now that you are a business that is underfunded or does not make a profit, like an NGO. How do they afford someone like Matt Brandon or Gavin Gough? Or what happens if you are a talented semi-pro photographer looking for your first proper client and someone approaches you. How much do you charge without losing that first job or undermining that all-too-difficult-to-judge market price?

Many of the larger more established NGOs have multi-million pound marketing budgets and regularly use the likes of Karl Grobl, Matt Brandon, David duChemin or Ami Vitale on highly structured and well funded assignments. And long may that continue.

But the issue is more with the new, fledgling or underfunded NGO and also with that individual semi-pro photographer who is wanting to make the leap to full time – both of whose activities are more localized or more specific to a particular campaign.

Often, that new NGO’s need is greater, but their budget is smaller, resulting in a prioritization of funds away from hiring that top photographer. In the case of the semi-pro, they opt for doing pro bono work in the hope that it will strengthen their portfolio, but all that happens is that it undermines their value with the client going forward.

The first stage of resolving this is that the NGO needs some form of Damascan road experience to help understand how to budget and monetize the value of the photographer’s work and the semi-pro photographer needs the courage to value their own work and stand firm on their price so as not to undermine the market.

So how do we break this vicious circle? How do we climb out of this rat hole?

Well, one answer it to try and remove the barriers that are stopping each of them. In the NGO’s case that barrier is usually a lack of funds. In the semi-pro photographer’s case it is often a mix of lack of confidence, lack of knowledge in how best to price or a lack of experience with customers.

And this is where an organization such as Focus for Humanity (FFH for short) starts to make a difference. We see our role as bridging these two communities who have shared needs and common goals but perhaps different perspectives.

So as to not leave you hanging, here is a brief summary of how we tried to create a solution to help everyone climb out of that rathole!

Focus for Humanity created assignment grants to allow underfunded NGOs to win the services of established photographers such Matt Brandon, David duChemin, Gavin Gough, Karl Grobl, Jeffrey Chapman or Edoardo Agresti. For free. The NGO gets a full assignment undertaken by a world-class photographer with no strings attached. Well, actually a couple of very minor strings, like agreeing to budget for the following years for similar services; being willing to take some mentoring from FFH on digital marketing and acting as a reference for future NGO applicants. The established photographer gets a new client and is paid the right market rate for his work.

And for the semi-pro looking for that final leap to full time photographer?

We have an annual scholarship that provides the funding to allow them to work with their first client – probably an NGO – and to be mentored into how to approach and further educate clients in the value of images. In addition the grants cover travel, upgrading their equipment and some project expenses.

And for those of you still a few years away from being ready to apply for this scholarship there will be a series of mentoring and workshop grants that will help you to work on your craft and vision.

We fund the Foundation solely through donations, and we run the organization as a virtual online foundation to minimize the costs. Our current target is to allocate 93% of funds into grants each year.

But we can do with your help in three ways:

Firstly tell everyone one about it. Add a blog badge to your site HERE, follow us on twitter HERE, join us on Facebook HERE but, most importantly, become our advocates within your own network and get others to sign–up or donate.

Secondly we need your pledges and donations and those of your friends. It can be a one-off donation of $10 or a monthly recurring donation of any amount you like. But if, for example, we got a thousand of you to give, say, $50 each we would then be able to meet all our commitments for this year. So if you want to help, then help us to reach more than a thousand people willing to give just that little bit.

Thirdly, If you work for a company in the photographic industry then you can help with sponsorship too – although we prefer to use the term partnering as we believe that this is a two way relationship and we need to give those partners equal benefit in return for their support. Every lens, body, bag, filter, tripod, plane ticket or item that we don’t have to buy for our grant winners, is money that we can re-allocate into another grant. We’ve got great ideas on what else we want to add to our grants in the coming months and years, and sponsorship or partnering is one way of making that happen.

“Be the change you want to see in the world”, said Mahatma Ghandi. Perhaps you can help us make real change in how NGOs and other organizations value the work of photographers to help humanitarian causes.

Our thanks to Matt for allowing us the platform of his blog to reach out and share with you all about Focus For Humanity. Thank you for reading this far and for showing an interest in what we are trying to do. You can read more detail about Focus for Humanity, our grants, how to apply and how to help by checking out our website, http://www.focusforhumanity.org.

Marco Ryan was born in the UK, but now lives in Cairo, Egypt with his wife and young family. His professional career as an eCommerce Strategist, Digital Marketing expert and speaker is covered on his work blog, www.marcoryan.com, but it ensures endless travel but sadly insufficient time for one of the more creative forces in his life – photography. Contact him through this blog for commissions or prints.

Related posts

• Depth of Field: Marco Ryan (4)
• Red Shirts and Black Smoke (4)
• “Shares well with others.” or “Like it? Link it!” (10)
• Vitale Video (0)
• Tomorrow's Guest Blogger; Gavin Gough (0)

Kopi Susu

It’s Friday and it’s been a long week. I don’t think you know, but my wife has been gone for two weeks to the Philippines. She is arriving back tonight. I’ve been playing Mr. mom, and doing a pretty sorry job at it.  I’ve managed to grill the worst steak ever, make the most pasty mashed potatoes of all time and absolutely ruined some linguine pasta. Did you know you are supposed to stir pasta? Who knew?  It will be great to have Alou home again, if for no other reason, for Jessie’s health.

On the blog it’s been a busy week. On Monday,  I was able to release to the world my PhotopShelter galleries. On Tuesday, I posted a multimedia slide show on The Last Songkok (prayer cap) Maker in Penang and then on Wednesday we had a lively discussion about critiquing images and whether to do that with a real world perspective or a perfect world perspective. Then, yesterday a post on conflict in images. So all-in-all it’s been a very busy week around here. Off the radar I’ve been working on several aspects of my social network. I managed to make live my Digital Trekker fan page on Facebook ,as well as add a nifty social software bar at the bottom of the site by Wibiya. Speaking of which, take a few minutes and play with the bar at the bottom of the page. The bar gives readers many different options to share this site and the information on it with others as well as options for drilling deeper into thedigitaltrekker.com.

I discovered a new analytics application called Woopra. it gives real-time information in a very user-friendly environment.  One cool thing about Woopra is I can tag visitor to my site with names and then pop up a browser screen on their screen that lets me chat with them while they’re on the site. It’s crazy, I’m not sure how I’d use it. Though I do think I scared David duChemin to death the other day when he was visiting my site. That alone was worth it.

Yesterday, at around four in the afternoon my Internet provider went down. Actually, my whole phone system went down. I’m now checking e-mail, and posting to this blog by using my iPhone tethered to my computer. I’m amazed at the speed and the bandwidth provides.

One quick FYI before I close this post. Next week I’ll be giving away a license to Soundslides Plus to some lucky reader. So be sure to check back in and be a part of this contest.

Now go out and have a nice relaxing weekend with someone you love. That’s what I am gonna do.

Related posts

• The Last Lantern Maker (29)
• QUICK! Worldwide Photo Walk Register Now! (0)
• Pushing Yourself (0)
• Multimedia: Wasim The Varanasi Sari Maker (4)
• Multimedia: The Last Hat Maker (5)

I am excited to draw your attention to my new PhotoShelter gallery.  I’m still uploading images, but you will get a good idea of what’s in store. To access it, simply go to the pull-down menus at the top of this page and go to the portfolio button.  I’m excited about my relationship with  PhotoShelter and am hoping this will give my clients direct access to my images and allow me to create searchable public and private galleries for them. Poke around, I think you will see a lot of new images that you probably have never seen before. I’m updating these galleries daily as well as adding new galleries often. a special shout out goes to Brian Hirschy for all his help on coding this it wasn’t as simple as I’d hoped. Thanks Brian. You can check out his guest post on this blog earlier this week HERE and his blog HERE.

I am done for the weekend. I’m off to a movie with my daughter (my wife is out of town and I’m being Mr. Mom). Now, go out and spend some time with your family as well.

Related posts

• No related posts.

By Brian Hirschy

Occasionally in the life of an NGO photographer things can hit too close to home.

On April 14th at 7am my wife woke me up with the news that there had been a series of powerful earthquakes in and around Yushu, a town 500+ miles southwest of where we live and work. An earthquake in this area is significant. Not only was my Plateau Photo Tours partner living in Yushu at the time, but most of our friends, co-workers, and employees are from this area – not to mention we had two Lumen Dei tours planned to this area this summer.

Events like this have the ability to transcend a person’s identity as a photographer. The moment my wife told me about the quake(s), I felt entirely human – I wasn’t a photographer or business owner. At that moment I was just human – freaked out, sad, and changed. Immediately all my human effort was put to use in the form of helping with initial medical supplies, medical teams, and setting up channels for proper communication with the earthquake zones and our NGO headquarters.

As days past and the death toll climbed, reports of close friends losing everything started to come in, my identity as an NGO photographer was further pushed to the back of my mind. For the first 10 days I was more than willing to let the press photographically cover this story, not knowing if I had the capacity to even point a camera at something so uniquely personal.

Two sleepless weeks after the quake, my brain was ready to merely entertain the powerful impact a photographer can have on a situation like this. It was no small task for me to even pay attention to the media coming out of this area – seeing destroyed restaurants where I had enjoyed butter tea with close friends less than two months earlier, seeing pictures on the internet of my friends homes in ruin (literally), seeing a place that I have covered photographically in one form or another for almost 8 years suffering – all covered by photographers that I’m quite positive, with no real fault of their own, couldn’t have cared nearly as much as I did.

Whether it was true or not, I couldn’t help but feel that most of the photography coming out of Yushu was coming from photographers that were there simply covering a story.

Simply covering a story. Simply covering the story has to the the antithesis of what we as humanitarian photographers desire to do. You see, It’s easy to show up in a disaster area and instantly nab compelling pictures of tragedy in motion – it’s a different mater entirely to let it effect you. I think we must believe that the art of sensitive and dignified photography comes from buying into what is happening on an some emotional level – however personal or close to home that may be.

The lesson I continue to learn is that the pictures I take are almost always of situations, people, and places I can walk away from – and that they mean so much more to those personally impacted by such things than they do to me. How easy is it for us to separate ourselves mentally and emotionally from the subjects we cover? It is impossible to detach humanity from photography so why do we so often detach ourselves? This thought, at least to me, is a compelling argument to approach our photography with an overly sincere amount of sensitivity, professionalism, and dignity.

Matt’s note: If you are interested in the relief work in Yushu and the NGO Brian works with, please visit yushuearthquakerelief.com and plateauperspectives.org.  Brian is a friend and a fellow humanitarian photographer working in Western China.  While working as a humanitarian photographer, he also helps arrange Lumen Dei and other photo tours and workshops to the Tibetan Plateau.  You can see his work at brianhirschy.com.  Be sure and check out his latest photo series:  The Face of Relief.

I’d encourage you to visit YushuEarthquakRelief.com and see what you can do to help those suffering in Yushu. With the quakes in Haiti, Chile, and now Western China, many people are becoming “compassion weary.”  I understand this. But the folks at Yushu did not have a choice to the the first, second or third in the line of disasters. YushuEarthquakeRelief.com is the best place to get money directly to the field through a foreign and trustworthy NGO making a difference on the ground.
Please help.

Related posts

• Review: ThinkTank's Modular Belt System (12)
• Depth of Field: Marco Ryan (4)
• Win a Zink Pogo Printer! (0)
• Welcome Acratech Tripod Heads! (6)
• Wat Chaiyamangkalaran (0)

I must confess I expected more out of the protest. Gavin assures me that they didn’t run off once they heard I was coming. But I am not sure. The numbers were way down compared to the days before. The closest thing to any excitement around us was someone tried to set fire to the bridge we were on. It ended up being more smoke than fire. As Gavin pointed out on his blog, the atmosphere has been more like a carnival than a protest. It feels like Thai people are too polite to do any real protesting like other countries.

Note:  The photos below show excitement after a fire broke out under the Phan Fa bridge in Bangkok. They show several bystanders pointing towards people running away after the smoke erupted, thinking they had set the fire. However, after posting these images the Bangkok Post stated the fire under the bridge was a result of an electrical short in the wiring that runs under the bridge and not the work of a miscreant.

Related posts

• Tomorrow's Guest Blogger; Gavin Gough (0)
• Guest Blog: Marco Ryan (13)
• Depth of Field: Marco Ryan (4)
• The Mundane (10)
• Sadhu Portrait #1 (13)

Brian Hirschy is a photographer friend of mine who lives in Western China. He runs photo workshops in the Tibetan region of China along with doing a few other things to keep busy. The other day he posted a story about being freaked out in the middle of the night by strange voices. I haven’t laughed as much as I did last night reading this post in a long while. Read the full story HERE and enjoy. While there check out the other post. Brian is a talented photographer that loves China. You put that together and you get THIS.

© Brian Hirschy, brianhirschy.com

© Brian Hirschy, brianhirschy.com

Related posts

• When We’re Simply Human (4)
• My First Malay Wedding (11)

A few weeks back I introduced you to Heber (pronounced like “ever” only with a “b”) Vega. Heber, if you recall, runs a NGO in Iraq, with his wife Belen and several staff. While in Iraq I taught his staff how to take better photos of the work they do so they can tell their organization’s story in print or in multimedia. Heber made a wonderful multimedia show on his first attempt. While with him in Iraq, he confided in me that photography had gotten under his skin and he could no longer ignore it. Heber is true to his words. Over this past weekend he launched his own photo blog and exploration in to humanitarian photography at hebervega.com. One of the plans that Heber has for the blog is to spotlight other photographers and their work. One way he plans on doing this is through a series of interviews with humanitarian photographers called 10.Q.  I was privileged to be the first of the series. For what it is worth you can find my interview HERE. Be sure and drop by Heber’s site and say hello. Now is not the time to lurk, now is the time to comment and encourage. Tell him, Matt sent you

Related posts

• Ya gotta love light! (4)
• Win a Zink Pogo Printer! (0)
• When We’re Simply Human (4)
• Welcome Acratech Tripod Heads! (6)
• Wat Chaiyamangkalaran (0)