exiftool -c "%.2f" -TagsFromFile @ -GPSLatitude -GPSLongitude photo.jpg

(Thanks to the EXIFtool Forum for their help.)

Why is this useful?

Modern phones automatically attach a GPS location to every photo you take. GPS resolution is around 10 metres. When you share your photos, you're often sharing your precise location.

I wanted to upload some photos to the Wikimedia Commons of an interesting junction box installed in our home. I didn't want my home location stored on the Internet forever - but I thought it would be useful to include a rough location.

The above command takes a location of 51.123456,0.987654 and returns 51.12,0.98. That's good enough to roughly show the location, without revealing it exactly.

People want to take a photo like this:

But it often ends up coming out like this:

That's not intended to be snarky. Most of us don't have the time, skill, or equipment to take stunning photographs. But that's OK! The best photographs of mere objects have already been taken. The photo that no-one else has ever taken is of you standing there!

That's what I love about selfies! A photo of a monument is just that. It shows you were there, once, kinda. But a selfie proves that you were there! I think there's something delightful about saying "This is me! Here I am!"

So, here are a couple of 360 selfies from our recent trips. They're not the greatest photos in the world - they're not static shots of a thing - but they are of us and the memories we made.

Rome

Hong Kong

Australia

The same flickr which capriciously deletes the photos of paying customers? The same flickr which has catastrophic accidents? The same flickr who bans paying customers for commenting on political issues? The same flickr which one day decided that paintings and drawings weren't suitable for its site?

Yeah. I'm not ok with that. If you're "liberating" your Instagram photos to Flickr, you're merely trading one jail cell for another.

As I've mentioned before, we're moving to an era where people control their own content. They don't need to cede it to some 3rd party and hope that the terms and conditions don't change from under their feet.

So, what's the solution? People are saying "what did we do before Instagram? Oh yes, Flickr!" What they should be doing is saying "What did we do before Flickr? Oh yes, self hosting."

That's where OpenPhoto.me comes in. The premise is simple. You store your photos on your own storage system. That could be your DropBox account (500 MB free), your Box.com account (5GB free), or Amazon S3 (5GB free), or CX.com, or DreamHost's DreamObjects - or, finally, on your own server.

They're your photos - so you get control of them. You can easily back them up, move to a different hosting provider, or delete them forever.

You get a nice front end for your photos - with commenting, tagging, albums, privacy settings, mobile viewing and uploads etc.

You can change the look and feel of the theme to suit your preferences.

With a single click you can import your images, tags, comments, and metadata from Instagram, Flickr and Facebook. No doubt more services will be arriving soon - or you can manually upload your photos.

As I've mentioned, if you really don't trust any of the above storage providers, you can use the Open Source OpenPhoto to run everything on your own server.

Why on Earth would you want your photos to be held hostage by some nebulous third party? Even if you have a billing relationship with them, it won't stop them changing their terms and conditions, or "mistakenly" deleting your work.

Want to liberate your photos from the evil Instagram? Tired of Facebook's stranglehold on your images? Remembering why you left Flickr in the first place?

Here's the button you need to press.

Police van in a disabled bay

As soon as I had taken a shot, PC Smith (40144) came out from the train station and asked to speak with me. She asked why I'd taken a photo of her van. I told her that it was parked in a disabled bay. She told me that she'd been called because a woman was self-harming on the station and that was the only place she could park.

Fair enough, I said. Then a funny thing happened. She asked me to delete the photo.

To my mind there are only two logical reasons she could have for wanting me to delete the photo.

1. She genuinely thought that the photograph was likely to be useful in the preparation of a crime.
2. She had committed an offence and didn't want there to be any evidence.

I asked her why she wanted the photo to be deleted, she told me that "in the current climate" the police had been asked to stop people from taking photos of sensitive buildings and of the police.

That isn't true - and I told her so.

She asked to take down my details.  I asked her why she wanted my details and whether I was obliged to give them.  At this point, I asked if I could record our conversation - she agreed.

I won't post the video because, frankly, it makes both of us look like arses.  I've got shakey hands and a wobbly voice, she rings her sergeant and gets told she isn't allowed to demand my details.  Neither of us are left exactly covered in glory.

She was told by her superior that she could take down a description of me. I told her that asking to delete photos was silly because they can be easily undeleted. I also thanked her for not escalating the situation. I left.  As I left, I allowed my phone to post the photo I'd taken to twitpic.

There are several interesting points

• Police still believe - or are still being told - that people aren't allowed to photograph "sensitive" subjects.
• Police are still asking for the destruction of private property (photographs). Know your photographic rights.
• Many people still don't understand that digital images live forever - whether on the Internet or as fragments on a memory card.
• Police still use common sense and are willing to listen if you put your case politely and firmly.  That's very reassuring.

I want to make it quite clear that I have no reason to disbelieve PC Smith when she said that she was attending a genuine call.  I'm not going to pursue the parking in a disabled bay matter any further. I am going to pursue the matter of the advice my local police force are given regarding the photography of them and their vehicles.

Remember, if you are taking photos that you think are genuinely important - upload them as soon as possible from your camera. If you're asked to delete a photo - it may be wise to do so; photos can be easily recovered.

Many thanks for all the retweets - it's good to know that I'm not alone in thinking that this is a farcical situation.

People retweeting my photo

Edit: Thanks for all your kind words and also to Boing Boing for picking this up.