Friday Announcements

I am excited to announce Phottix, makers of professional photo accessories have join the Digital Trekker as sponsors. I have come to really appreciate the folks at Phottix. Not only do they make some innovative gear, (check out their wired and wireless remote for a start!) they also understand the needs of photographers in this day and age. Like Think Tank Photo, BlackRapid and the rest of my sponsors, Phottix has an attention to detail and quality that sets them apart. So, join me in welcoming Phottix to The Digital Trekker.

This week I had fun catching up with my flickr account. I had not added photo to flickr in months, maybe in over a year. What got me back to flickr was a small web based application that I added to my site. You may notice the “Map” link in the menu bar at the top of the blog. The map is made by trippermap.com, it feeds off of my flickr feed and puts any geo-coded photos in your flickr account on a customizable map for your readers to browse. I found it easy to use and configure. It even displays route lines of your trips. One caution however, you have to make sure your camera’s date is set correct, otherwise things could get messy. Trippermap reads the EXIF data on your images and then puts your photos in order by date and time, connecting them and thus creating your routes. They provide HTML codes to embed you map as I did on my page above and in the blog post. The only downside I see about this service at this time is the maps are Flash. So, if you want to view it on an iPhone or iPad, forget it. But, over all I find it a nice add-on to my site.

Speaking of apps; if you have an iPhone you have to check out a simple little app called Instagram. It is a very simple photo application that has a handful of presets and boarder. You either shoot a new image or load a photo from your iPhone gallery and then run it through a preset you select. The outcome is very creative. The app is not only a photo application but a social networking tool as well. You can follow other Instagram users or post your images on flicker, Twitter, FaceBook or other social networks available in the app. Give it a try.