Christopher Ward is a very nice man. A very nice man indeed. When Matt Brandon and I were grumbling about having to type EXIF data into WordPress, Chris leapt in like the helpful, geeky Canadian that he his and offered a solution.
In case you’re wondering what on earth I’m talking about, WordPress is the software that powers this web site and EXIF data is the information that gets embedded into a digital photo each time you release the camera’s shutter. EXIF data can tell you what camera you were using at the time, what lens, focal length, ISO, shutter speed, aperture and what colour socks you were wearing that day. OK, one of those is not 100% true.
Obviously, if you’re interested in somebody’s photos then this kind of data can be useful and will add another dimension to your understanding. So, all this data is available and although there are some WordPress plug-ins that import the data they display it in nasty captions that spoil our carefully-designed layouts. Matt and I were looking for something that added the EXIF information in a discreet alt-tag. What’s an “alt-tag”? That’s the little caption that pops up if you hover your mouse over an image. Try it on the image below and you’ll see what I mean.
So Chris, through goodness-knows what dark arts, has been able to create a WordPress plug-in that introduces a button to the Media Panel. When I add a photo to a blog post now, I simply press the cunningly titled “Insert EXIF” button and guess what? The EXIF data is inserted into the Title field, which is what populates the alt-tag. Genius!
Copying and pasting that EXIF data doesn’t take a lot of time but it’s an awkward and irritating task that you think ought to be much simpler. Well, I just think it, Chris makes it happen.
With this example above, you can see that I was shooting with a 16mm lens – on a full-frame camera that’s wide indeed. You can also see that I was using a Canon 1Ds MKII set to 1/15th of a second, which gave an aperture of f/22. The only thing it doesn’t tell you is the answer to this question: “How do you know when you’re close enough for a dramatic, wide-angle panning shot, Gavin?”, to which the reply is “When the thing you’re photographing runs over your toes, you’re probably close enough”.
Thank you Chris! What a nice man indeed.
Glad I could provide something that you wanted.
Clever, a nice way of including EXIF (which I’ve missed from your shots).
A big big thank you for this! It is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Funny enough, I also use ProPhotos theme and wanted to keep it clean without any extra data on the screen all the time.
Have a nice day and stay happy!