Everyone wants to get that all-important snap of the Eiffel tower or their loved ones holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but it’s also easy to forget about the hidden beauty that is all around you. While everyone is flocking to the tourist traps with cameras in hand, there could be a remarkable and unique photo opportunity just around the corner that they’re missing out on.
With this in mind, the San Francisco-based company Mapbox set out to create the ‘Geotaggers’ World Atlas’, a long-term project to “discover the world’s most interesting places and the routes that people follow between them”. By using around 300 million geotagged photos from Flickr, the Atlas gives a fascinating insight into where keen photographers gravitate towards in every city in the world.
London
Tokyo
While the most popular destinations are easy to spot from the dense webs of black lines, it also gives precious insight into some of the lesser known areas that are just as photogenic. In a blog post on the Mapbox website, project leader Eric Fischer writes: “The project has been full of surprises, making me aware of streets, neighborhoods, and whole cities I knew nothing about before.”
The Digital Photography School encourages its readers to go and discover these fabled streets, neighbourhoods and cities. They have a motto - to think “outside the postcard” - and they want people to keep this in mind whenever and wherever they are on holiday. “Think about your last vacation - what do you remember fondly? Those famous landmarks? Or the colourful markets, the fresh pastries in the bakery window, the people sitting in the cafes, the street vendors and buskers, the smell of the streets after a morning rain?”
It often turns out that the photos taken away from the big attractions and in lesser-known locations are the ones that we remember the most - the ones that best reflect our experiences during that time away. With hundreds of people uploading the same photos to Instagram and Facebook every day, why not be the one photographer that really stands out?
