Del Rey Culver City and who knows what else

By Michael Dorausch, D.C.

Is no secret I like taking photographs, and when I don’t have my semi professional hobby camera equipment, I’ll often times take photographs with my iPhone. I tend to be in my chiropractic office a lot (like many chiropractors are) and I’ve likely taken thousands of photographs of all sorts of different things throughout the practice. Everything from magazine cover labels to x-rays of my own wrists, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say I take about 10 new photographs each day.

I’ve talked a ton about location, and I’ve mentioned at several chiropractic conferences (and search engine conferences) that location data (aka exif data) shows up on lots of photographs, especially those taken with mobile phones. I’ve been noticing though that depending on which phone I’m using, and where I’m standing when taking photos in my office, I’m getting different listings of cities in and around Los Angeles.

For example, the screen shot to the left shows map location data for a photo taken outside the front door of my office, that was then uploaded to my flickr profile page. The photo was taken w/my Apple iPhone 3GS.

Notice the city (maybe they don’t consider it a city) is Del Rey, Culver City, CA in the US. It’s a bit odd since Culver City is technically about a 1/2 mile up the road (closer to Centinela Blvd) from my location.

Del Rey would be more accurate but few people would likely be able to locate Del Rey, CA on a map. Marina del Rey yes, but not plain Del Rey. In my opinion it would be correct to call the area Los Angeles, since that is the city, but I think the maps are attempting to narrow down and fine tune on results. Los Angeles is huge and quite a generalization when doing location pinpointing.

I noticed similar results when in Las Vegas this weekend, so it’s not just what I’m finding at my office. Think it’s time to get out both my mobile phones, and my WiFi camera card, and see if different locations get tagged for photos taken from the same position and location.

Try this with your phone. Take a photo at your chiropractic office, and upload it online (or email it to me). Let’s see if the city listed in the exif data is the city your office is commonly known as. I’m gonna test this as well while traveling next week.

Gives me another reason to visit chiropractors while on the road.