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WHAT’S IN A PICTURE? LOTS AND LOTS OF DATA

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

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In the month of May, we do a lot of celebrating.

We take a day (and usually, a weekend) to honor our moms. For a lot of us, there’s graduation ceremonies and weddings to attend. And just about the time we think it can’t get any busier, there’s everything we do during the weekend leading up to Memorial Day.

With all of the parties, it’s fitting, perhaps, that May is also National Photography Month!

And while it’s often been said that “a picture is worth a thousand words”, you might be interested and, maybe, even surprised to learn that every time you take or upload a photo using your smart phone or digital camera, it generates 145 rows of metadata, including the exact date, time, and GPS location that the image was taken. It includes many other details as well, such as the type of camera and the settings that you used.

Known as EXIF data (short for Exchangeable Image File Format), it’s a standard that specifies formats for images, sound, and ancillary tags that are recorded by digital cameras. To be clear, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to have this data stored in pictures. In fact, in some ways, we’ve benefitted from the features that having this data can provide when we’re searching for a photo we’ve taken – using a date on the calendar – or we’ve wanted to trace the path we followed on a recent vacation based on photos that appear on a map.

But what happens, you might ask, when you decide to share these photos on social media? Thankfully, sites such as Craig’s List, eBay, Facebook, Instagram and others strip away most of that EXIF data before posting it publicly. That doesn’t always happen, however, when you’re using messaging apps, public forums, online forums, and even your own personal website where the process to remove that personal data may not exist.

As an example, if I were to message you based on a listing on Craig’s List to ask you for additional photos and then, you emailed them directly to me, it’s possible that the other person could view the EXIF data to find out what kind of phone you use which might reveal some details about your economic status, as well as the exact GPS coordinates of your home.

In understanding how all of this works, it’s a bit of a balancing act of weighing the features and benefits you gain versus any legitimate concerns you have about maintaining your privacy. There’s a video on YouTube that’s informative and provides some easy-to-understand information about the EXIF data and how it can be used to securely store and share your photos.

In following these tips, it’s a good idea to use the “rule of three” and rely on three different methods for backing up your photos – including two that are on-site and one off-site to minimize the chances that what you’re storing isn’t lost to a fire or theft.

A great article on TechRadar.com provides some of the best ways for making it easier, including:

  • Using cloud storage
  • USB flash drives
  • SD Cards
  • External hard drive
  • Software libraries
  • Free cloud photo services
  • Print them out (just in case)
  • Backup, rinse, repeat (your routine to keep photos, videos and files safe)

At a time when it seems as though that part of the advertising pitch – from the people who try and entice us to purchase the latest, most advanced mobile devices – is that it’ll turn all of us into professional photographers or videographers.

Instead, let’s celebrate the people who are the real pros when it comes to creating artwork through a camera lens while trying our best to keep the image of our thumb out of whatever memories we’re trying to capture (and keep secure)!