Daniel Greene

Category: Photography

Posts with photos, about photos, and about photography itself

  • Geotagging with my AMOD Photo Tracker AGL3080



    Los Olivos Finishing Tent
    Originally uploaded by Daniel Greene.

    This permanent tent has shade, a misting system, and blowers that they use to blow the water out of the crevices of your car so the water doesn’t come out of the crevices while you’re driving and leave water spots. Interestingly, you can see the tent in the satellite image of this geo-location if you click the map link. I’d say my GPS data logger captured my location almost perfectly for this photo.

    To explain my workflow on this public, geotagged photo:

    I bought a GPS data logger called the AMOD Photo Tracker AGL3080 for $69. All it does is record location from second to second. I synchronized the clock on my camera to the clock on my computer (which is automatically synchronized to an atomic clock). When I got ready to start shooting, I clipped my Photo Tracker on my belt with the carabiner that came with it, and turned it on. I took all the photos I wanted to take, and when I was finished, I turned off the Photo Tracker. When I got home, I hooked up the GPS unit to my computer via USB and dragged and dropped the log onto my desktop (the device shows up on my Mac as an external drive). Then I put my camera’s SD card into a card reader and connected it to my Mac via USB (it shows up on my Mac as an external drive as well). I dragged and dropped all my photos from the shoot into a folder on my desktop.

    Now that I had the photos and the tracklog in my computer, I launched a freeware app called GPS Babel+ and opened the NMEA log and converted it to a GPX XML file. Then I launched another freeware app called GPSPhotoLinker and I loaded the GPX file and the .CR2 (Canon Raw) photo into the app, and I had the app insert the geodata into the EXIF of all the RAW photos.

    I then imported the geotagged RAW photos into Aperture, where I added keywords, version names, and captions– which show up on Flickr as tags, titles, and descriptions respectively (GPSPhotoLinker automatically added the tags Phoenix, Arizona, and United States). I made whatever images adjustments I wanted to. Finally, I used the Aperture FlickrExport plug-in to upload this photo to Flickr and the photo automatically showed up on the map.

    I’ve been manually geotagging for months now by using the Flickr Organizr to drag my photos onto the map, and as complicated as the above process might sound to you, I assure you that this new process is much less time consuming and much more accurate.

  • In Memory…



    In Memory…
    Originally uploaded by Daniel Greene.

    …of all those who have died in service to the United States of America.

    I almost kept this post to just that first sentiment, “In memory of all those who have died in service to the United States of America.” But that would be too safe. And I can imagine being criticized for copping out and pandering to blind patriotism.

    Yet I know that many Americans’ patriotism is not blind at all, but rather… forgiving. I am reminded of a story my Granny Greene recounted. She spoke of a woman she had known who worked for the USO during World War II. She said, “When you walked by a young man in the canteen and he patted your fanny, you just smiled and kept on walking. That’s patriotism!”

    And that’s what many of us do– smile and keep on walking. We know that countless men, and now women, have died in battles we wish had never begun. We know that the current war is not a popular war (and I use the word “popular” not only in the sense of “well liked” but also “of the people” because many American know that this is not our war, but a war waged by politicians either we didn’t vote for or we regret voting for). And we know that some people make it hard to be proud to be an American. And yet we forgive these deaths, these wars, and these people. We smile and keep on walking. We are proud to be American not only because of everything that is American, but in spite of things we might not quite approve of.

    I believe we have more reasons to be proud of our country than to be ashamed of it. And we must always remember that no matter whether or not we believe in war, our countrymen and countrywomen who have died in wars deserve our gratitude and our honor. We cannot know what it is like to fight in wars unless we have fought in them. But we can remember the inestimable value of every human life and have the deepest respect for each individual who gave his or her life for America.

    And let us not allow patriotism to blind us to the value of each and every human life lost on the other side as well. Our enemies are not necessarily evil, at least not down to every last person who has fought us in honor of their country. We must remember the fallen not only here, but there as well. We must force ourselves to have some compassion for the mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, sisters, brothers, daughters, and sons who have lost their beloved family members to these wars.

    And we must work toward peace for our sake and for theirs.

  • 100,000 Views on Flickr



    100,000 Views on Flickr
    Originally uploaded by Daniel Greene.

    I knew this day was coming for the past month or so, so I prepared. I deleted about 1,500 photos that didn’t get many views and probably weren’t very interesting to people. In the process of revising them, I learned that people like photos that tell a story right from the thumbnail and that reward them with satisfaction for clicking on the thumbnail to view the photo because they are special, unique, beautiful, exciting, strange, or otherwise intriguing. I also learned not to post so many versions of the same thing. Usually one is enough. If I’m down to two photos of something now, I force myself to pick one.

    Since I have over 5,000 photos, I have created a Collection that I call my Portfolio to give you a look at other Flickrites’ favorites and mine; this Collection contains three sets with 36 images each in the three main types of photograph: Portrait, Landscape, and Still Life. I might play around with the categories in the future, but I plan to keep this set at the top of my home page and rotate photos in and out of it, never exceeding around 100 (or 108, as the case is now).

    I appreciate your views. Your views, comments, and faves have taught me a lot about what people want to see. I will still take photos for myself, but now I have a better sense of what interests others.

    Since I joined Flickr in August 2006, I have enjoyed meeting people both in my own region and all over the world. Worldwide members of Flickr who have shown me the world through their eyes. Thank you for taking the time to see the world through my eyes.

  • Families Can Be Together Forever

    This is dedicated to a colleague’s son who died suddenly last week at the age of 4. I attended his funeral at a Mormon church yesterday. The first order of service was singing a hymn called “Families Can Be Together Forever” whose lyrics resonated with me, a gay Jewish man:

    “I have a family here on earth.
    They are so good to me.
    I want to share my life with them
    Through all eternity.
    Families can be together forever
    Though Heavenly Father’s plan.
    I always want to be with my own family
    And the Lord has shown me how I can.”

    (Words: Ruth Muir Gardner, Music: Vanja Y. Watkins)

    It is interesting that I heard this song the day after watching the movie Juno and being struck by a line spoken by Ellen Page’s character: (more…)

  • Cute Little Pig with a Waggly Tail

    We saw this cute little pot-bellied pig on South Congress Street in front of Zen Japanese Food Fast. This pig (named Chorizo, which is Spanish for sausage) is owned by the same man who owns the restaurant. In the video, he tells as woman who asks if she can pet him that he just wet him down because he was hot. The woman says she used to own 13 of them and raise them. Then he says, “His name’s Chorizo…” 😉

    I uploaded this the night Flickr opened its doors to video. I know this would have been more timely news had I blogged it then, but better late than never. Anyhoo, enjoy the cute piggly-wiggly!