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Sunday Photoblogging: Locals, Tourists, and Data

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Flickr user Eric Fischer has done something very interesting. By accessing the geolocation information in photos uploaded to Flickr and Picasa, he's been able to map out the locations that tend to be photographed by locals and those that tend to be photographed by tourists.

Blue dots are for locals (people who have taken pictures in a city over a period of a month or more), red are for tourists (people who took pictures in a city for less than a month) and yellow dots represent photos of undetermined origin.

Here are two maps for Los Angeles. The first one shows Santa Monica and West LA. The second one shows downtown LA and Pasadena. I've taken the maps and added labels.


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Eyeballing these maps, it appears as if tourists tend to take photos at a handful of common locations, while locals tend to take photos primarily everywhere else. UCLA/Westwood seems to be the exception to that trend. It also appears as if those who live in Pasadena (at least among the photos included in this analysis) don't use their cameras all that much.

I wonder what would result if I mapped my photos onto these images?

Jason G. Goldman is a science journalist based in Los Angeles. He has written about animal behavior, wildlife biology, conservation, and ecology for Scientific American, Los Angeles magazine, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the BBC, Conservation magazine, and elsewhere. He contributes to Scientific American's "60-Second Science" podcast, and is co-editor of Science Blogging: The Essential Guide (Yale University Press). He enjoys sharing his wildlife knowledge on television and on the radio, and often speaks to the public about wildlife and science communication.

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