How do you get the country/state/region/city/state/zip/postal from GPS coordinates?

Question

I have GPS coordinates on all of my photos. I want to include tags/IPTC data for the city, state, zip, etc.. However all I have is the GPS coordinates. How can I take these and get meaningful info in an automated fashion (I have thousands upon thousands of photos, so typing each one into google maps would not work).

Feudality

Answer 1

You can do reverse geocoding with Google Maps API using the following HTTP request:

Simple CSV:

http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=40.756041,-73.986939&output=csv&sensor=false

More Complex XML:

http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=40.756041,-73.986939&output=xml&sensor=false

Simply change the "q" parameter with your latitude,longitude.

Note that the Google Maps API has a limit of 15,000 request per IP address per day. (Google Maps API FAQ)

Ciapas

Oh nice, any idea on ToS for that? Can I do 40000 of these overnight? :) – Feudality

You can do 15,000 per IP address per day: code.google.com/apis/maps/faq.html#geocoder_limit – Ciapas

Answer 2

What about doing reverse geocoding with the Google Maps API?

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html#ReverseGeocoding

Disulfide

Answer 3

Here is a bulk Reverse Geocoder which, internally, uses the Google Maps API to reverse geocode an entire series (in a CSV file) of latitude and longitude pairs.

It would make this fairly easy.

Luminiferous