Locals and Tourists maps show where visitors and locals take pics in major cities

Eric Fischer's "Locals and Tourists" Flickr set uses geotags to compare photos taken by locals (people whose photos come from the same city, over long terms) and tourists (people whose photos come from a city for less than a month, and who have some other city they usually post from) and produces colored maps showing the difference. Readers use Flickr's annotator to add explanatory notes. Here's London.

Locals and Tourists (via Kottke)

• [Xenu]

  You know what would be fun? Set up a few dozen Flickr accounts with photos that have modified geotags such that they spell out words or have giant smiley faces over the entire city.

  Next time someone does a project like this, they’ll be in for a pleasant surprise…

• [hubs]

  Also worth checking out are Eric Fisher’s maps of the best locations to take photos of a city’s skyline:
  http://www.artifacting.com/blog/2010/06/23/maps-of-city-skylines/

• [Anonymous]

  Amusing: only “tourists” take pictures from the top of Tokyo Tower; “locals” take pictures from nearby.

  -j

• [dbarak]

  London huh? Interesting. I’m surprised there are any photos showing up there, since taking pictures in public is evidence of terrorism.

  All that aside, it looks like varicose veins.

• [futbol789]

  This is my new living in the future moment. Neat. Just neat.

  • [wrybread]

    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

    what he/she said.

    Not that that really needed to be said.

• [Anonymous]

  Interesting that in L.A. the only big congregation of “locals” photos is at UCLA, but that may speak more to the demographics of Flickr and/or iPhone users. [Guessing that in these early days of gps-tagged photos a large proportion of them will be from iPhones.]

  Whereas in SF bay area, “locals” photos are more spread out (SF being more lovely??), though with a concentration at UC Berkeley.

  In both cities tourist photos are where you’d expect. But in SF, locals seem to take more pix at the botanical garden while tourists take more at the nearby museums.

  Now to overlay these with the recent crime visualization maps. (Did they have one for stolen cameras?)

• [Anonymous]

  Does anyone happen to know what the line segments between photos represent? Do they show the pictures of one user in the order taken?

• [Sethum]

  This is a beautiful depiction. It reminds me of the video game statistical hotstop maps that show where players spent most of their time. Only this is based on reality, and therefore useful and interesting. Aggregate data like this really can provide a powerful insight into human activity.

• [mudpup]

  I had not thought about my phone geotaging photos until I loaded them on my iPad and it organized the photos into piles at pins on a map. Now I want a high quality camera that geotags bad. Bad, bad, I have enough tech toys now, but when someone asks to see pics from the Padre Island trip it’s so easy to go to the map…

• [Anonymous]

  Summer people. Some are not.