7 ms·

World’s most photographed places

180 points by shawndumas 13y ago

ye 13y ago
Holy crap, Somalia.
- mxfh 13y ago
  Not even that faint dot of Socatra just east of it belongs to Somalia, that remarkable island is part of Yemen. http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/09/most-alien-looking-place-on-earth.html http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/09/most-alien-looking-p...
- anonymfus 13y ago
  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-1/ http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-2/ http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-2/ http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-3/ http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-3/ http://tema.ru/travel/somalia/ http://tema.ru/travel/somalia/ English versions of this reports are available, switcher is in top right corner.
  - Zaheer 13y ago
    Thanks for the links! Very interesting read!
wtvanhest 13y ago
Finally, proof that acorn street is not the most photographed street in the world. Amazing work on this. I just found some new places to go on vacation.
scottcha 13y ago
Interesting to see the hotspots in non-populated places. I took a look around the Washington Cascade Mountains and you can see photos aligning around the main trails, peaks, road turnouts and other sights.
chintanp 13y ago
Does anyone know the data source for this?
- uptown 13y ago
  "The heatmap shows the places people like, based on the number of panoramio photos at each place in the world."
- kps 13y ago
  Panoramio, according to the top-row ‘?’.
ps4fanboy 13y ago
Look at North Korea
chrisbolt 13y ago
Doesn't seem to work at all in Safari, had to switch to Chrome.
shabinesh 13y ago
Amazing work.
- 69_years_and 13y ago
  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.
avighnay 13y ago
A great new way to find interesting places, awesome indeed! This is what a social network should be, a place where human collective consciousness is used to better our choices in life.
ClementM 13y ago
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.
- m_mueller 13y ago
  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).
  - guard-of-terra 13y ago
    I think this is true but the background color of the whole France is too dark even for that. I will assume that French don't use panoramio for some reason.
dionidium 13y ago
There are probably some sites in here that really are photographed more, but a lot of it seems to be some version of this: http://xkcd.com/1138/ http://xkcd.com/1138/ Edit: Oh! It's much more useful if you zoom in. Sorry for the knee-jerk.
- dclowd9901 13y ago
  He should make another one on the correlation of this comic being linked to in the comments of a heat-map related HN submission.
  - julien_c 13y ago
    And one on this very comment.
beggi 13y ago
Wonder why Europe has so many more photograph density than the US. Just correlating with higher population density?
- antimagic 13y ago
  Although weirdly there is a big dark space in France - what's with that?
  - arethuza 13y ago
    Isn't a lot of France fairly rural and with a low population density - the distribution of pictures in Europe seems to match population density fairly closely: http://kids.britannica.com/comptons/art-143547/Population-density-of-Europe http://kids.britannica.com/comptons/art-143547/Population-de...
- hfsktr 13y ago
  History? I don't know the source so maybe there is a bias of what data is available.
- brc 13y ago
  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.
  - nraynaud 13y ago
    I just checked Paris, the most photographed is Moulin Rouge, in the middle of the former prostitutes quarter. More photographed than arc de triumph, Eiffel tower, of the 2 km long Champs Élysée. We have to talk either about tourists motivations or the effect of the difference between the camera position and the target position in density maps relevance.
bpm140 13y ago
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 not well known, at different times. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it never found its way to actual release, but it taught me a ton about where to look in data for the cool bits of info.
- shalmanese 13y ago
  walkingsf did a series of heatmaps based on flickr data: http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624209158632/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/7215762420915863...
te_platt 13y ago
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.
- crazygringo 13y ago
  That was my first reaction too. But zooming all the way in (to Manhattan, for example), it's clear that the heat map corresponds to actual scenic tourist spots, it goes all the way down to street level, pretty amazing. And since these are "panoramio" photos, not selfies snapped for Facebook, it would seem to be a pretty accurate reflection of tourist destinations, as opposed to population.
  - altrego99 13y ago
    When you zoom in, you do in fact control for differential population density to a lot of extent.
    - blueblob 13y ago
      Not for the markers though, they are mostly for cities with high densities of people.
- wtvanhest 13y ago
  Southern Utah is Arches and Moab etc.
  - prawn 13y ago
    Also Zion, Bryce. Spectacular sights.
- tammet 13y ago
  The "all sizes" selection has a similar effect: take "small", "tiny" or "remote" to put markers on sparsely populated locations only.
est 13y ago
At a rough glance I thought it was world’s most photoshoped places. Now that would be interesting.
wavesounds 13y ago
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 http://www.flickr.com/map
arethuza 13y ago
Geograph have gamified photo density heatmaps for the UK and Ireland: http://www.geograph.org.uk/ http://www.geograph.org.uk/ [i.e. You can earn points by submitting images for an empty grid square or where there haven't been any recent images]
Chestofdraw 13y ago
Zooming in on London, Piccadilly Circus (the no. 1 photo location in London according to this site) and found that the no.7 location here is 'Alex's Amazing Test Location of Greatness' I wonder what this is and if anyone else has found similar spots anywhere else?
- tammet 13y ago
  The marked locations in high-res areas like cities are based on both most popular wikipedia articles and most popular foursquare locations in the intense area. Quite likely Alex's place is one of these highly popular foursquare locations.
Houshalter 13y ago
Someone made a program that could reconstruct models of places from tons of automatically gathered photographs (http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth.html http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosy...). Imagine creating an entire model of the world from pictures like this, as well as things like Google's streetview, and in the future tons of data from drones and robots.
izzydata 13y ago
This is probably going to be the coolest thing I will see all week.
ithinkso 13y ago
How data like that are gathered? Amazing.

180 points by shawndumas 13y ago

ye 13y ago

Holy crap, Somalia.

mxfh 13y ago
Not even that faint dot of Socatra just east of it belongs to Somalia, that remarkable island is part of Yemen. http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/09/most-alien-looking-place-on-earth.html http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/09/most-alien-looking-p...
anonymfus 13y ago
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-1/ http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-2/ http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-2/ http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-3/ http://tema.ru/travel/somaliland-3/ http://tema.ru/travel/somalia/ http://tema.ru/travel/somalia/ English versions of this reports are available, switcher is in top right corner.
- Zaheer 13y ago
  Thanks for the links! Very interesting read!

wtvanhest 13y ago

Finally, proof that acorn street is not the most photographed street in the world. Amazing work on this. I just found some new places to go on vacation.

scottcha 13y ago

Interesting to see the hotspots in non-populated places. I took a look around the Washington Cascade Mountains and you can see photos aligning around the main trails, peaks, road turnouts and other sights.

chintanp 13y ago

Does anyone know the data source for this?

uptown 13y ago
"The heatmap shows the places people like, based on the number of panoramio photos at each place in the world."
kps 13y ago
Panoramio, according to the top-row ‘?’.

ps4fanboy 13y ago

Look at North Korea

chrisbolt 13y ago

Doesn't seem to work at all in Safari, had to switch to Chrome.

shabinesh 13y ago

Amazing work.

69_years_and 13y ago
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.

avighnay 13y ago

A great new way to find interesting places, awesome indeed! This is what a social network should be, a place where human collective consciousness is used to better our choices in life.

ClementM 13y ago

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.

m_mueller 13y ago
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).
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  I think this is true but the background color of the whole France is too dark even for that. I will assume that French don't use panoramio for some reason.

dionidium 13y ago

There are probably some sites in here that really are photographed more, but a lot of it seems to be some version of this: http://xkcd.com/1138/ http://xkcd.com/1138/ Edit: Oh! It's much more useful if you zoom in. Sorry for the knee-jerk.

dclowd9901 13y ago
He should make another one on the correlation of this comic being linked to in the comments of a heat-map related HN submission.
- julien_c 13y ago
  And one on this very comment.

beggi 13y ago

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

antimagic 13y ago
Although weirdly there is a big dark space in France - what's with that?
- arethuza 13y ago
  Isn't a lot of France fairly rural and with a low population density - the distribution of pictures in Europe seems to match population density fairly closely: http://kids.britannica.com/comptons/art-143547/Population-density-of-Europe http://kids.britannica.com/comptons/art-143547/Population-de...
hfsktr 13y ago
History? I don't know the source so maybe there is a bias of what data is available.
brc 13y ago
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.
- nraynaud 13y ago
  I just checked Paris, the most photographed is Moulin Rouge, in the middle of the former prostitutes quarter. More photographed than arc de triumph, Eiffel tower, of the 2 km long Champs Élysée. We have to talk either about tourists motivations or the effect of the difference between the camera position and the target position in density maps relevance.

bpm140 13y ago

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 not well known, at different times. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it never found its way to actual release, but it taught me a ton about where to look in data for the cool bits of info.

shalmanese 13y ago
walkingsf did a series of heatmaps based on flickr data: http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624209158632/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/7215762420915863...

te_platt 13y ago

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.

crazygringo 13y ago
That was my first reaction too. But zooming all the way in (to Manhattan, for example), it's clear that the heat map corresponds to actual scenic tourist spots, it goes all the way down to street level, pretty amazing. And since these are "panoramio" photos, not selfies snapped for Facebook, it would seem to be a pretty accurate reflection of tourist destinations, as opposed to population.
- altrego99 13y ago
  When you zoom in, you do in fact control for differential population density to a lot of extent.
  - blueblob 13y ago
    Not for the markers though, they are mostly for cities with high densities of people.
wtvanhest 13y ago
Southern Utah is Arches and Moab etc.
- prawn 13y ago
  Also Zion, Bryce. Spectacular sights.
tammet 13y ago
The "all sizes" selection has a similar effect: take "small", "tiny" or "remote" to put markers on sparsely populated locations only.

est 13y ago

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

wavesounds 13y ago

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 http://www.flickr.com/map

arethuza 13y ago

Geograph have gamified photo density heatmaps for the UK and Ireland: http://www.geograph.org.uk/ http://www.geograph.org.uk/ [i.e. You can earn points by submitting images for an empty grid square or where there haven't been any recent images]

Chestofdraw 13y ago

Zooming in on London, Piccadilly Circus (the no. 1 photo location in London according to this site) and found that the no.7 location here is 'Alex's Amazing Test Location of Greatness' I wonder what this is and if anyone else has found similar spots anywhere else?

tammet 13y ago
The marked locations in high-res areas like cities are based on both most popular wikipedia articles and most popular foursquare locations in the intense area. Quite likely Alex's place is one of these highly popular foursquare locations.

Houshalter 13y ago

Someone made a program that could reconstruct models of places from tons of automatically gathered photographs (http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth.html http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosy...). Imagine creating an entire model of the world from pictures like this, as well as things like Google's streetview, and in the future tons of data from drones and robots.

izzydata 13y ago

This is probably going to be the coolest thing I will see all week.

ithinkso 13y ago

How data like that are gathered? Amazing.