Blogging with Aperture 3, the iPhone and a SLR
As a full-time blogger and speaker at Social Media and Social Networking conferences, I’m always trying to optimize what I do. My suitcase is compartmentalized with Eagle Creek bags. My MacBook Air has everything I need on it, and nothing more. The goal is to get the most out of the smallest, lightest package possible.
With Aperture 3, my iPhone and my Canon 50D (the three things I always have with me when I travel) I’ve built a blogging workflow that I could do easily before, and makes my photos much more social and interactive.
Following up on David’s post about making books in A3, I was just at the Olympics shooting the city, bikes, and Olympiad culture for Bike Hugger.
Back in the studio, I imported the iPhone data to map my 50d photos,
uploaded those to Flickr and now they’re geoloacted and show proximity to everyone else taking photos in Gastown.
This is a huge revolution because it means that I can do my normal pre-Aperture 3 workflow (shoot with both the iPhone and my SLR, upload images to Flickr) I can now expand the usefulness of my images without any additional gear, work or hassle.
Enjoy this Post? Share it on your favorite social bookmarking site...
Author: Byron
Byron is the Principal of Textura Design, a social and creative agency based in Seattle. He's a full-time blogger, inventor of the consumer product Clip-n-Seal, and coauthor of Publish & Prosper: Blogging for Your Business, a New Riders book. Here on Mac Create, he's a Mobile Evangelist.In his career, Byron built many of the original business blogs for Fortune 100 companies. He evangelizes new web technologies, developing and deploying strategies to integrate them into business practice. He also founded and publishes Bike Hugger, a blog about bike culture and rides his bicycle in faraway places like Europe, China, and India.
10 Comments
Justin Shattuck (3 comments.)
February 16th, 2010
Byron,
I am confused. So, are you taking the photographs with your Canon 50d or your iPhone? I’m curious because I’ll be hanging out with you and David at SXSW in a few weeks and whenever I take photos of your ugly mugs, I want to be able to log where I took them. I’m kidding, but seriously. Could you better describe this work flow and which piece of hard-ware you’re doing what with? At first glance I thought you were running an app on your phone that stored the GPS location of a given photo for pulling back out later, but then again after reading it looks like you’re just shooting with the iPhone
dlbyron
February 16th, 2010
Sure — it’s so simple. What I’m doing is shooting away with my SLR and also taking periodic “placeholder” shots with my iPhone. Aperture will import the GPS data from my iPhone photos and place them on a map. I then drag the SLR photos onto the map and the GPS data is applied. As David wrote in his tutorial, I can make books with them, maps and so on, but for the social networking, the photos are geotagged from my iPhone and when uploaded to Flickr placed on a their maps. That map also will show who was around me taking photos at the same time. That’s rather awesome for photowalks or the group rides we do at Bike Hugger.
Note I’m also moblogging with the iPhone and uploading shots like these on the fly — the workflow above is showing what I’m doing back in the studio when I have more time.
dlbyron
February 16th, 2010
Also, David can tell you about the GPS tracker device he carries to do the same thing without the iPhone. A3 will import GPS track data.
Nathan Smith (2 comments.)
February 16th, 2010
Sounds like a decent and fairly easy way to track where you are shooting. Do you clear the photos off the iPhone after they are in aperture or do you leave them on there? If you are clearing them then what method are you using?
I think this is something that I would like to start doing but find it is hard to manage my photos on the iPhone since there is no way to separate them without a computer. It would be nice to have an album dedicated for just geotagging/tracking photos that would be kept separate from all the other random photos that are taken along the way.
dlbyron
February 16th, 2010
The A3 import iPhone GPS data function does just that and nothing more. You import them, if you want, with A3’s regular import function. A couple options are to bring them in and then create a smart album that shows you all your iPhone photos globally and also per project. I create the smart albums for the GPS data and also to avoid duplicate uploads because I’m moblogging pics from wherever I am and then follow those up with the high-rez SLR images. See this related post
You can also use an OSX utility called Image Capture and choose on import where to send photos: Aperture, iPhoto, desktop, and so on. You can also delete photos from the iPhone with Image Capture. An example is if I just took a photo of a street sign as a placeholder, I don’t need to import that back in the studio and just delete it
Parelius
February 17th, 2010
Publishing photos to Flickr using Aperture 3 flickr albums does not work for me, because the GPS data is not being preserved. There seems a bug in A3. Can you confirm this?
I use iPhone Apps for tracking GPS data while I’m shooting with my SLR. I map the GPS data to my photos using http://www.houdah.com/houdahGeo/.
Justin Shattuck (3 comments.)
February 17th, 2010
Byron,
Thanks for the heads up mate. This is completely off-topic, but I guess you met Mr. Robb Sutton in SC or NC during a recent ride trip. Robb from bike198 that is. I operate the site with him and handle all the design/development and such just like here at MCN. You are going to be at SXSW this year right? At least David mentioned you would be. Nick and I from Just the Web will be there and Michael Dick too, so hopefully we’ll be able to meet and slam a beer. Thanks for the heads up on what you were doing with the iPhone exactly. Appreciate it.
dlbyron
February 17th, 2010
@Parelius I don’t use A3’s built-in Flickr exporter because it’s too limited. The desktop exporter from Flickr retains the data. You can manually add the GPS data to a photo in Flickr and also in the Organizer view place your photo function. For an example of Flickr maps by coordinates, see this view of Vancouver
http://www.flickr.com/map/?fLat=49.280516&fLon=-123.110046&zl=5
dlbyron
February 17th, 2010
@Justin Bike Hugger will represent at SXSW again with a Mobile Social. I’m at Bike Expo during that but coming in on Monday for a talk on Tuesday with Livestrong.
Parelius
February 18th, 2010
@dlbyron Sure, I can upload images manually. But firstly, I want to manage GPS data in the same repository as my images (that is A3), and secondly, I think that the A3 flickr albums are also meant to sync my A3 album to my flickr album. Thus, whenever I add new images to my A3 album, they will be added to my flickr album. Likewise, when I change metadata, this should affect also my images on flickr.
Here I see an added value over a workflow based on exporting and manually uploading.