Canon is another story. If you want your pictures being geotagged immediately (at the moment they are taken), you must buy the GPS adaptor: WFT-E4. Among other things, this baby will add the geotag directly to your pictures. But that comes with a price, almost $1000 for the WFT-E4! And you still have to buy the GPS unit.

As I had no use of the WFT-E4 except for geotagging and didn’t want to spend $1000, I searched for a low cost solution.

Qstarz

I settled for a GPS unit that does only records GPS track, like the Qstarz. I choose the BT-Q1000ex

It costs (2010) about 150$. I choose this one because it’s the most accurate and if you’re familiar with GPS units, you’ll have noticed that they don’t like slow speed, like people walking.

I hesitated with the Qisteq Phototrackr; but the chipset is less accurate and even if the unit costs less ($69) you have to buy extra softwares to geotag your pictures.

How it works

The process is in two steps. The first is that you have to synchronize your camera clock with your GPS clock. The second is that once you have imported your pictures on your computer, you must synchronize them with the GPS track recorded.

The Qstarz comes with two softwares, the Qtravel and Qsports. The one that interests me is the Qtravel. According to the manual, this software will geotag your pictures automatically.

The reality tells another story.

First, the Qtravel software couldn’t read Canon RAW file. Second, it wasn’t able to track the photos, despite the clocks having been synchronized correctly. Third, it is really slow.

I forgot completely Qtravel to geotag the pictures; instead, I’m using it to export the track in GPS format.

Then I use a marvelous free program called GeoSetter. There you say where you pictures are, and this program can read and write to RAW files, you import your GPS file and voilà!

In GeoSetter you can also add more information, like the name of the town or place, the time zone and so on.

Hopefully this post will save some of you time and money!

Ian’s approach to landscape photography is profound, yet humble.

Source here.

We can enjoy sceneries that both have the technical mastery and reflect the patience Ian has to wait for the right moment.

It is also a great journey through places that many people would not visit within their lifetime. Personally, I always enjoyed reading the story behind the pictures and with Ian, you will really enter that backstage story and maybe glimpse the true beauty of his pictures.

If you’re a photographer yourself, consider buying his latest ebook “Chasing the light”. Not only it has a low price (5$) but offers great advices on light and scenery composition. And if you’re not interested in the photography tips, you can still enjoy Ian’s beautiful photography in A4 format.

All images posted here are from Ian Plant.

I have no idea where this comes from, neither where it goes.

Feel free to visit the dedicated website: nonspee.ch

We’re All Gonna Die

Simon’s famous We’re All Gonna Die 100m long portraits of 178 people, taken during 20 days from a railroad bridge in Berlin. It took Simon 17 months to sort out the 3000 pictures and come with this incredible image.

When I read the title, I immediately labelled it with the usual dark and fearful words. But Simon didn’t mean it that way; to him, the very fact that indeed we’re all going to die, is a powerful reminder to share the love and joy of living we’ve been provided. Actually, that message flows and shine from the 100m long picture.

The first time I look at the picture, I spent half an hour, just looking, speechless, thoughtless. I was midly aware of the discrepency between my previous fearful label and the power of message transcribed from the picture.

You can read an interview from Simon about this project here: Interview with Simon Hoegsberg.

His other projects

I’ve been drawned to Simon other projects. I completely forgot the images, as they seem to be the harbingers, not the mean in the end that “common” photography is, today.

One of his project, Faces of New York is about asking “random” people what they’re thinking about their face. I put the “random” in quotes, because Simon seems to be attracted to people who are also conveying a powerful message.

The woman pictured here, for example, thanks God for the face she’s been given and loves it.

You can label each face, think it is beautiful or not, in the end, these are just thoughts. Meaningless thoughts that create a meaningless world. God (or whatever name you’ll call It), did really create this meaningless world? Or is that our meaningless thoughts that create this meaningless world?

Looking at the faces Simon chose for his project was for me a powerful excercice to become aware of all the thoughts and labels I was projecting.

Travels

Another type of project from Simon, are to travel from one place to another with challenging means. For instance, he travelled from Copenhagen to Istanbul on bike.

Copenhagen/Istanbul also conveys a powerful message; if you’re aware and open, not matter what happens to you, help will comes.

Somehow, it’s more a journey into life than a geographical journey.

Free advices + coffee

Simon’s latest project Free advice + coffee seems to be leading more obviously to consciousness than photography.

During one week, 5 hours a day, Simon offered free advices and coffee. About 50 people stopped, all of them sharing existential problems.

What is beautiful in Simon’s work, is that he is discovering the world from experience and then know, opposed to “know about”, which is mind stuff. For example, he said that he noticed from experience that people don’t need advice, as they know the answer themselves. For many of us, it takes psychological studies, coach practices and quiet a bunch of theory just to realize this simple fact. It requires also a lot of humility and openess, to admit that we know nothing.

By letting a complete stranger enters their life, people allowed to opportunity to be truely listen to and maybe, from this shared awareness would come an answer.

I would like to thanks Simon for his work.

The author is Elena Filatova, a Russian woman who travels and documents the Chernobyl area since several years. She rides on her motorbike and thus can explore roads that cars cannot.

Chernobyl history

I was 12 years old when it happened. Here, in West Europa, little information did spread from Russia, which was still URSS and a very closed country, as most of the East was. Little did we know how serious the disaster was. Even now, we still don’t know how many died, unofficial sources claim 400’000 people, maybe more. We’ll never know. And more than twenty years after, it’s gone from our memories. Mostly.

Comment from Elena:

The day after the accident, this place on the bridge provided a good view of the gaping crack in the nuclear containment vessel that was ruptured by the explosion. Many curious people came here to have a look and were bathed in a flood of deadly x-rays emanating directly from the glowing nuclearcore.

Original here.

Here is what Wikipedia says about it, in case you really forgot or never heard about.

The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear reactor accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union). It is considered to be the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history and the only level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale. It resulted in a severe release of radioactivity following a massive power excursion that destroyed the reactor. Most deaths from the accident were caused by radiation poisoning.

Source here.

Elena

I have no idea why the author is travelling through these dead countries. But a few things moved me, for reasons I cannot name.

Visit her website and digg (yeah, really digg) for informations and photos.

Comment from Elena:

It is really Plutonium that will reign here for thousands of years. It is extremely toxic and highly chemically reactive, half-life of Plutonium-239 is over 24,000 years. Plutonium is appropriately named after Pluto, god of the dead and ruler of the underworld.

Source here.

The quality of the photos is not the subject here, for most where taken more than 20 years ago and surely their authors had other concerns than quality in mind.

What moved me in Elena’s work is that she seems to be drawned to these places. She says, at several occasions, that during the day, the silence is deafening and that it’s like entering a painting, especially in ghosts villages. Nights seem more lively.

Comment from Elena:

Why trees so often grow on doorsteps?

Maybe it is their way of telling us that we have lost all privileges and are not welcome here any more.

Source here.

She noticed also a message from Nature; “we don’t need you”. I guess it’s what moved me. Human being is cut from nature and all other kind of lives. We are cut from ourselves. And until we don’t remember who we truely are, yes, Nature doesn’t need us.

Less than a week ago, I changed for the 5D Mark II. It was a planned choice also. I wanted to resell the 5D just before the summer holidays. Now, I have the camera happily stored in the closet, took a couple of pictures, tried to read the manual, but so far, I still couldn’t play with it.

It was challenging to get the Mark II. I first ordered it on Swiss shop that noted it “in stock”, but appeared that their database wasn’t synchronized with the reseller’s. I placed a second order on another shop, which claimed to have it in stock, too. They even sent me an invoice notice! After a week, I inquiry about the camera and, like before, nothing had been sent. Out of stock. For at least one month.

Finally, I ordered it at BH Photo Video. One day later, it was out of stock also!

Does anyone knows what’s going on with this camera? I mean, this is no cheap DSLR..