[OSGeo-Standards] Standard For Photo Descriptions?

[P Kishor]

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 2:33 PM, Landon Blake <lblake at ksninc.com> wrote:
>
> Raj,
>
> I was hoping to have some sort of text file that could be edited by
> users without special software. I don't think this would be possible
> with EXIF.
>
> Thanks for the suggestion.

I would second Raj's suggestion and stick to EXIF. It is one of the
more well designed metadata storage mechanisms that is embedded inside
the data it is described, travels with it, and yet, can be easily
queried, edited and explored programmatically.

If the metadata are not *inside* the photo, they will sooner or later
get separated from the data, the photo, and you will have a mess on
your hands.

If you need users to see/edit the EXIF information, heck, they can use
many commercial, freeware, open source, and even closed source
software packages to do so.

If only geographic metadata were like EXIF.


>
> Landon
> Office Phone Number: (209) 946-0268
> Cell Phone Number: (209) 992-0658
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Raj Singh [mailto:rsingh at opengeospatial.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2009 10:56 AM
> To: Landon Blake
> Cc: standards at lists.osgeo.org; java-collab at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Standards] Standard For Photo Descriptions?
>
> Some of what you want is in the EXIF spec:
> http://www.exif.org/specifications.html
>
> Could you use their UserComment field for the rest? Obviously not
> optimal, but it would build on a standard, and people and software are
> already conditioned to look for photo metadata in the EXIF data.
> ---
> Raj
>
>
> On Feb 4, at 1:39 PM, Landon Blake wrote:
>
>> As part of my "experimental" work with the Open Street Map project I
>> have been taking digital photos of features that I map. This
>> includes things like street signs, land marks, (and of course)
>> streets. I've been working this week on a way to describe these
>> photos for future use. Think of the photo descriptions as a type of
>> metadata.
>>
>> What I really want is to have photo descriptions that could be used
>> in combination with a digital photo of a feature by a user to
>> attribute a feature visible in the photo. Ideally the photo and the
>> photo description would allow attribution by a user that hadn't done
>> the mapping personally.
>>
>> I'm wondering if there is an existing standard for digital photo
>> descriptions, especially photos of geospatial features taken during
>> field work.
>>
>> I tinkered with an XML file format for this very purpose. I've
>> attached a zip file with two samples of the format. If there isn't
>> an existing standard for geospatial photo descriptions, I wonder if
>> other OSGeo members would be interested in working on one. I don't
>> envision anything grandiose like the standards put forth by the OGC.
>> I'm thinking of something much simpler, and practical. I'm really
>> looking for a file format that would allow us to share structured
>> digital photo descriptions among open source GIS applications.
>>
>> My initial xml file contains the following sections:
>>
>> -          Date and Time
>> -          Job/Project Identification
>> -          Photographer Info
>> -          Camera Info
>> -          Photo Direction
>> -          Photo Location
>> -          Photo Description
>> -          Visible Features List
>> -          Photo Limits List
>>
>> Please let me know what you think. I copied the java-collaboration
>> mailing list on this message. If there is interest in this type of
>> standard, I would be willing to do some initial work on a Java API
>> to read/write the file format.
>>
>> Landon
>>
>>
>>
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>
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-- 
Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org/
Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/
Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) http://www.osgeo.org/