When I go to different locations I enjoy finding a new place to run. I also enjoy taking photos along the way, especially if I am in a park, or somewhere unusual.

But sometimes our backyards we don’t think about… but should. I go out the back door several times a week and run in a great place, Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor MI. In several years of running there I never took a camera, or even thought about it.

I have been playing with some new software to do Geo-Tagging of my photos, and was looking for some pictures which I could use. To do this I needed a GPX track recorded to match the camera time against, not having anything like this I decided I needed to go take some photos while wearing my Garmin 305….. so I did. I put on the watch, grabbed the camera and headed out the back door to the park.

There are several outcomes from doing this. The easiest is to create the photo album with the tagged photos using Jalbum. When viewing this album (as well as most of my others) you can click on the word “See Map” below the photos and it will open Google Maps and take you to where the photo was taken. Pretty cool. I have been doing this for some time, but using Picassa and Google Earth to do the tagging. This works great, but is far to time consuming to tag each photo with an individual location so I usually resorted to grouping photos in areas. This method allows every photo to have its own location code. The software also lets you reposition the photo on the map to correct for any inaccuracies in the GPS coordinates that were saved. These are typically fairly close, but not always close enough to suit me. It also allows you to create a “track” or “route” which can then be displayed on Google Earth with the pictures on it in their proper locations.
I need to do a little more experimenting on that function yet before I release it. I did some experimenting way back when, but haven’t done much with this project lately.

Until I get a track laid down I guess this will have to suffice. Update July 25, 2010… I “got the track laid down” and am sharing it here.

As to the photos of the park itself, I actually ended up with a lot more photos than I thought I would, and actually ran a few places I do not normally go, just to see what was there that might be “photogenic”. I hope you enjoy seeing “My Running Park”.

Until the final bridge is crossed,
George