Plotting Photographs on a map

Google Maps

Longitude and Latitude from GPS can be mapped using a variety of online resources, such as Google Maps.

For example, to map a location which is 51 degrees, 33 minutes and 21.6 seconds North, 0 degrees 16 minutes 46.2 seconds West:

• Go to maps.google.com
• Enter the co-ordinates in the following format: 00 00 00, 00 00 00, where the first 6 digits are the North/South, and the second 6 digits are the West/East.
• If the Latitude is South of the equator, or the Longitude is West, then a negative needs to be inserted before the six digits.
• In this instance, this translates as: 51 33 21.6, -0 16 46.2.

This can also be entered as two digital numbers, one for Latitude and one for Longitude. To translate it, divide the minutes by 60 and the seconds by 3600, and add them together.

• In this case, the Latitude is 51 + 33/60 + 21.6/3600 = 51.556, and the Longitude is 0 + 16/60 + 46.2/3600 = 0.2795.
• Again, South or West co-ordinates need to be negative.
• Therefore, this translates as: 51.556, -0.2795.

In both cases, this shows the following:

Map data copyright Google 2014

Mapping multiple points

There are many APIs and web sites which can plot multiple GPS latitudes and longitudes.

One such website is Darrin Ward’s “Plot Lat/Long Points on Map by Coordinates”. This requires that the locations be translated into decimal form as above, separated by carriage returns.

Map data copyright Google 2014

GPS co-ordinates can be extracted from Windows Explorer – see the article “Windows Explorer latitude and longitude” for details of what can and can’t be extracted.

This data can also be shown by time – see the article “Mapping photographs in 4D” for more information.

Both Filecats Metadata and Filecats Professional are able to extract GPS document properties:

• in degrees/minutes/seconds format, along with hyperlinks to Google Maps, and
• in decimal format, in a format which allows you to copy and paste into Google Maps and Darrin Ward’s website.

Filecats Professional requires Microsoft Excel; Filecats Metadata does not.

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