World’s most photographed places • Hacker News Board

Re: World’s most photographed places

#21

Post by wtvanhest » Thu, Jan 16, 2014, 4:03 AM UTC

te_platt wrote: post #19

I'm curious how this would look if it were somehow "divided by" population density. It wouldn't make sense for somewhere in the middle of the ocean but it might highlight more remote, scenic places. edit: For example I noticed that southern Utah is significantly brighter than you would expect from population density.

Southern Utah is Arches and Moab etc.

Re: World’s most photographed places

#22

Post by brc » Thu, Jan 16, 2014, 4:12 AM UTC

beggi wrote: post #13

Wonder why Europe has so many more photograph density than the US. Just correlating with higher population density?

The average population density of western europe is much higher than the average population density of even the eastern USA.

Coupled with the fact that there is a lot more 'older' stuff there, whether castles, old battlefields, churches, you name it, it's not surprising there are a lot more tourist photos being taken. The average European city is a lot more photogenic than the average American or Asian city (clearly there are exceptions, given NY is #1).

Tourism is not necessarily a function of what is the best thing to do, but what is the best thing to do, given a set budget, timeframe and comfort level. On those scores, tourism in western europe wins.

Re: World’s most photographed places

#23

Post by 69_years_and » Thu, Jan 16, 2014, 4:16 AM UTC

shabinesh wrote: post #8

Amazing work.

Yes it is, I upon zooming into my area of the world, a sparsely populated area, but visited by tourists, the map highlights the road system, and all of the tourist trips that are undertaken on a boat, or on a walking/tramping track. This information is great feedback for tourist operators in my area, of which I'm not one. But I'll be passing the link onto them.

Re: World’s most photographed places

#24

Post by est » Thu, Jan 16, 2014, 4:19 AM UTC

At a rough glance I thought it was world’s most photoshoped places. Now that would be interesting.

Re: World’s most photographed places

#25

Post by m_mueller » Thu, Jan 16, 2014, 4:35 AM UTC

ClementM wrote: post #11

Interesting to see that France which is supposed to be the most visited country in the world is not the brightest area in Europe...at all. Could there be a bias in the data due to the fact that all the countries don't have the same usage rate of social medias ? Or just population density ? Or official statistics are the ones that are biaised... Anyway, great work. Loved it.

My guess: In France everything concentrates in Paris, while other popular sites are 'diluted' (there is not the spot in Provence, Normandy or Bretagne where everyone takes pictures).

Re: World’s most photographed places

#26

Post by wavesounds » Thu, Jan 16, 2014, 4:51 AM UTC

This is great! Flickr has a similar feature[1] I use all the time but I love the heat map addition

http://www.flickr.com/map

Re: World’s most photographed places

#27

Post by anonymfus » Thu, Jan 16, 2014, 5:28 AM UTC

ye wrote: post #4

Holy crap, Somalia.

If you are interested in relatively fresh photos of everyday Somali, you could look at reports of famous Russian traveller and designer Artemiy Lebedev:

http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-1/

http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-2/

http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-3/

http://tema.ru/travel/somalia/

English versions of this reports are available, switcher is in top right corner.

Re: World’s most photographed places

#28

Post by Zaheer » Thu, Jan 16, 2014, 6:26 AM UTC

anonymfus wrote: post #27

ye wrote: post #4

Holy crap, Somalia.

If you are interested in relatively fresh photos of everyday Somali, you could look at reports of famous Russian traveller and designer Artemiy Lebedev: http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-1/ http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-2/ http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-3/ http://tema.ru/travel/somalia/ English versions of this reports are available, switcher is in top right corner.

Thanks for the links! Very interesting read!

Re: World’s most photographed places

#29

Post by shalmanese » Thu, Jan 16, 2014, 6:44 AM UTC

bpm140 wrote: post #18

Back in 2007, one of the teams at Yahoo Research Berkeley (YRB) built an awesome tool on top of Flickr that showed on a map the things that were photographed somewhat, but not a ton. For instance, it wouldn't surface pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, but it did show pictures of the Yoda statue in the Presidio (how I learned of it's existence). There was even day mode and night mode to see what was interesting, but…

walkingsf did a series of heatmaps based on flickr data: http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/7215762420915863...

Re: World’s most photographed places

#30

Post by lelf » Thu, Jan 16, 2014, 7:16 AM UTC

beggi wrote: post #13

Wonder why Europe has so many more photograph density than the US. Just correlating with higher population density?

There are much more to see in rural areas in Europe than in US, plain and simple. Plus, perhaps, different density distribution (but first sentence covers that too).