Andrew Macpherson

I very much like to GeoTag my photos, particularly Landscape and Street photography.  I’ve been a great fan of both GeoTagger and GPS Photolinker on the Mac.  The first links to a Google Earth plugin to find where you have placed location crosshairs, the second works with GPX track logs to work out where you were when you took a photo.  In both cases one has to get Lightroom to re-read the metadata for it to notice the location.

Lightroom 4 Beta has all this functionality built in to the Maps module, which is a big win, but ideally one should still carry a GPS device, such as a Garmin eTrex and download the tracks to synchronise with the photo timestamps.  Of course there is also the track data held inside one’s iPhone, but Apple have gone out of their way to make that difficult to access.

Enter GPX Master+ which uses your Dropbox account to synchronise track files to your computer from your iOS device, ready for import into Lightroom 4 (or GPSPhotoLinker) and just makes life that little bit easier.  Usual caveats about Battery drain apply, but if like me you have a car charger this is unlikely to be an issue.

The "Stuck On Earth" iPad App

The Camera Club is heading out in early May (Bank Holiday Weekend) to Bodelwydnn Castle Hotel, North Wales, and there were a couple of spots that are on my “Must See” list for the trip, In particular Pontcysyllte Aqueduct the new World Heritage Site, and Sir Clough William Ellis’ famous Portmeirion Village, background for the cult TV series “The Prisoner,” after that it is simply a case of where the whim takes one… or is it?

Trey Radcliff famous for his HDR style, and “Stuck in Customs” travel photography blog, has had an iPad & Android App built called “Stuck on Earth” which uses Flickr geotagged photos, and various cool aspects of Flickr’s organisation and cataloguing to pick some existing images to find the spots & shots others have shared, and challenge one to do better.  It downloads the photos one picks out as trip markers to the portable device so that the challenge remains with one, even when out of WiFi range, or failing again with mobile data networks.  (BTW go into a trip and the add image interface will let you remove shots)

I haven’t found out how to edit the spelling of a failed search (vs retyping from scratch) but otherwise I’m finding it fairly useful for picking out some potentially interesting spots.

Think Tank Photo who make rather good camera bags, are doing an advent accumulator with their “In a Bag” promotion.

It’s free to enter, so probably worth following this link and filling in the entry form to get a chance to win. I quite fancy the bag itself, but there are already a whole lot of really worthwhile goodies added, and a daily chance at one of their superior shoulder bags

Good luck!

Don’t get me wrong, the guys who do seminars are almost without exception extremely dedicated, skilful instructors who make the most of the teaching oportunity the format affords their students.  Such was the case with Scott Kelby’s “Light it, Shoot it, Retouch it” tour to Amsterdam.  I really enjoyed it and it also gave me a great chance to revisit a wonderful city.

iPad view from the 7th row

I did enjoy and learn, it was good value for money, but from the 7^th row the screens were fairly poor contrast and one wonders what one missed.  I’m delighted for Scott that there were around 250 attendees paying rapt attention to his training, but I don’t think one gets as much  out of a class as one might from a workshop where one follows along, and emphasises the learning experience by doing. (continue reading…)

View from Daraich Guest House

When we went to Fort William for the Train trip, we stayed in an excellent B&B Daraich Guest House, a short but steep climb from the main street.  The rooms were comfortable, well decorated, and quiet.  Breakfast in the morning left nothing to be desired.  Highly recommended. QR with contact details below (continue reading…)

The Jacobite, fired and ready for off

Just back from one of those remarkable experiences, you know the sort, where you tell people what you’ve just done and the almost universal reaction is “Oh, I’ve been meaning to do that…” in this case it was a trip I arranged for my brother-in-law who is a great railway buff.  We took the steam train “The Jacobite” on an excursion from Fort William to Mallaig.  This is the Hogwarts Express run over Glenfinnan viaduct.

In fact a lot of the outdoors shooting for Harry Potter took place in Glenfinnan, and Alnwick castle (Hogwarts) was transposed from it’s rather flatter borders setting by the magic of post-production up to a promontory on the loch.  I got much fascinating detail from Robert Haining a National Trust for Scotland ranger.  NTS owns the Glenfinnan Monument to the 1645 rising.

Anyway here’s a slideshow: Jacobite Steam Trip (warning 120 Mb)