Locus Pop Is Live
Photos with no place can find one
Jimmy Penlesky
Photos with no place
My GoPro Hero 8 came with me on every run during the pandemic. Shooting photos mid-run was a small way to pay attention to the outside world when we were mostly stuck indoors.
After a while I got interested in turning those runs into short videos: the photos, plus a GPS flyover of the route, stitched together in apps like Relive or Slid. That’s when I hit a wall. Some of my GoPro images simply didn’t show up as options. The GoPro has GPS, it turns out, but it can take five minutes or more to acquire a signal after powering on. I took it on long runs and powered it on and off to save battery, so nearly every photo ended up with no location attached.
My watch was recording GPS the entire time. Why couldn’t that data reach the photos? I went looking for a way to do it and found nothing.
The frustration stuck with me for years. I kept notes on what I wanted: a way to connect my workout routes to the pictures I took along them. Everything I needed was already sitting on my iPhone. Once I had a clear direction and the time to build it, I started on Locus Pop.
It takes your workout route and writes the location back onto the photos (or videos) you shot during it, so every image lands in the right place on the map. It took a while to get right, and I’m glad to finally share it.
Get Locus Pop
Locus Pop is on the App Store now.