If I take a photo of a distant object with a zoom lens, and then geotag it manually, would it be more useful to tag the location of the distant object (what is seen in the photo) or the location from where the photograph was taken?
For example, if I take a photograph of Alcatraz from Coit Tower in San Francisco, should I tag that photo with the location of Alcatraz or Coit Tower?
Answer
Most of the time you have more use of the position from where you took the photo.
If you know from where the picture was taken, you can often from the photo see exactly which direction the camera was pointed. If you know the position of the subject, you might be able to see approximately which direction it was taken from, but seldom the exact position.
Of course, if you know that you will only ever be interrested in the location of the subject, you can discard any other information. Geotagging is always a bit of a compromise; it would be nice to have an exact three dimensional vector from the position of the camera to the position of the subject, but we only tag one point, and only in two dimensions.
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