SEABOSS Bottom Photographs from the Cruise 2014-046-FA in Narragansett Bay, in JPEG Format

The USGS Mini SEABOSS system was deployed to capture still photos and video in the H12324 study area in Narragansett Bay. This system was used to obtain 2 to 7 still photographs at each station as the R/V Rafael drifted over the seabed for 2 to 5 minutes. The third laser on the system was set to an angle such that the optimum photograph height was 60 cm. The default focus on the camera was set to 50 cm. The imaged area is most often within .3 to 1 meter from left to right. Other camera settings are as follows: aperture is set at f/8; shutter speed is 1/250 second; standard color mode. The camera time is set to GMT. A total of 103 images of the seafloor were acquired. Full-resolution images have georeferencing information that was added to the header of each image (see other process steps), however, the navigation related to each photograph is also available in an Esri formatted shapefile: 2014-046_324botphotos.shp. These data can be downloaded from the following locations: https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2015/1149/data/botphotos/2014-046_324botphotos.zip; https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2015/1149/html/ofr20151149_catalog.html.

The digital images were recorded on an SD memory card within the camera. The images were transferred from the camera to a hard drive at the end of the cruise.

The original JPEG images were renamed from the sequential, camera automatic filename to a filename reflecting station location. This was done for each individual file in Windows Explorer.

The full-resolution JPEG images (3648 x 2736 pixels) were downsampled using Photoshop CS to create JPEG images with medium resolution (600 x 450 pixels) and thumbnails (150 x 113 pixels). The filename indicates the image resolution. For instance, the full-resolution JPEG image, 324-1a.jpg, was downsampled to produce medium-resolution JPEG image, 324-1a_mr.jpg, and thumbnail 324-1a_tn.jpg.

Three fields were added to the attribute table of the shapefile of photo locations: photo_name, date_exif, time_exif. These fields were added so that existing fields could be modified to meet the format requirements for accessing or adding to the Exif header. The photo_name added the ".JPG" extension to the PHOTO attribute. This enabled a script to access the individual photos. The field date_exif reformatted the DATE attribute to YYYYMMDD. The field time_exif reformatted the JDTIME attribute to HH:MM:SS.

The photo locations were exported from ArcMap 9.3.1 using XTools Pro 7.1 as a comma-delimited text file. The attributes chosen for export were: LATITUDE, LONGITUDE, photo_name, date_exif, time_exif. A Python version 2.7.3 script (kate_write_exif.py) was then run that incorporated this information, along with additional information, into the appropriate locations in the EXIF header of each full-resolution JPEG image. The PYTHON script uses ExifTool (version 9.4.6.0) to write the information to the image headers of the full-resolution images. The full-resolution images will eventually be incorporated into the WHCMSC photo database and the EXIF header information is a requirement for the database.
The following tags were populated in the JPEG image headers. Information is duplicated in some tags. This was done because different software packages access different tags.
GPS tags: The values populated are unique for each image and based on the information exported from the photo locations shapefile.

GPSLatitudeRef
GPSLatitude
GPSLongitudeRef
GPSLongitude
GPSTimeStamp
GPSDateStamp

JPEG tags: The tag is listed along with the information used to populate it - which is the same for every image.
Comment: Photograph of the sea floor in southern Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island from down-looking camera on the USGS SEABOSS deployed from the R/V Rafael during survey 2014-046-FA (http://cmgds.marine.usgs.gov/fan_info.php?fan=2014-046-FA). Released as part of publication DOI:10.3133/ofr20151149.

EXIF tags: The tag is listed along with the information used to populate it - which is the same for every image.

ImageDescription: Photograph of the sea floor in southern Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island from survey 2014-046-FA.
Artist: Katherine McMullen
Copyright: Public Domain - please credit U.S. Geological Survey

IPTC tags: The tag is listed along with the information used to populate it - which is the same for every image.

Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
Contact: WHSC_data_contact@usgs.gov
Keywords: Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, 2014-046-FA, SEABOSS, sea floor, USGS
CopyrightNotice: Public Domain - please credit U.S. Geological Survey
Caption-Abstract: Photograph of the sea floor in southern Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island from survey 2014-046-FA.

XMP tags: The tag is listed along with the information used to populate it - which is the same for every image.

Caption: Photograph of the sea floor in southern Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island from survey 2014-046-FA.

To extract the information from the image headers using ExifTool, the following command can be used (tested with ExifTool version 9.4.6.0): exiftool.exe -csv -f -filename -GPSTimeStamp -GPSDateStamp -GPSLongitude -GPSLatitude -n -Artist -Credit -comment -keywords -Caption -Copyright -CopyrightNotice -Caption-Abstract -ImageDescription full-res/*.jpg > out.csv
The -csv flag writes the information out in a comma-delimited format. The -n option formats the latitude and longitude as signed decimal degrees.

Edits to the metadata were made to fix any errors that MP v 2.9.36 flagged. This is necessary to enable the metadata to be successfully harvested for various data catalogs. In some cases, this meant adding text "Information unavailable" or "Information unavailable from original metadata" for those required fields that were left blank. Other minor edits were probably performed (title, publisher, publication place, etc.). Attempted to modify http to https where appropriate. The source information was incomplete and had to be modified to meet the standard. The metadata date (but not the metadata creator) was edited to reflect the date of these changes. The metadata available from a harvester may supersede metadata bundled within a download file. Compare the metadata dates to determine which metadata file is most recent.

Added keywords section with USGS persistent identifier as theme keyword.