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Where Bostonians take photos vs. where tourists take photos
By adamg on Sun, 06/27/2010 - 10:09am
Eric Fischer is mapping cities based on where residents take photos on Flickr and where tourists snap away. Blue is us; red is them. The Globe has more.
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Comments
Interesting
This whole thing is really fascinating. The Globe article seems to have missed something though; the article (and the comments) are talking about how locals aren't going to post a photo of Copley Square or whatever on Flickr. Which seems true for locals taking photos of scenery, but that isn't most of the photos people take in their own city. Flipping through my pics, most of my pictures that were taken in Boston were at people's houses or are stuff like something at the grocery store I found funny. So, sure, my pictures are going to show up in "tourist" areas, except that my most recent picture of Harvard Square is of some grad students inside an office, and my most recent Boston Common area picture is people inside an apartment.
Just a matter of time
With cool technologies like Photosynth, in a few years it'll be trivial to mashup not only geotags but actual real-world photo subjects. All the tourists' Copley photos will overlap, and your grocery store pics will stand alone (unless there was a National Dairy Council convention in town). Hispanic! Hispanic! Hispanic!
Neat idea in theory
I love that we can do stuff like this with all of the data we have available on the web, but I do see a practical problem. I lived in Boston for 36 years, and posted LOTS of pics on Flickr that are tagged in the area. But now that I moved 900 miles away 2 years ago, anyone color-coding my Flickr pics based on being a local/tourist will be all wrong!
But it IS cool!
UPDATE: Of course, I RTFA AFTER posting this, and see that he coded the pics based on duration of stay in the area, and not something else, like home location from Flickr...
photo hot spot.
Since I live in JP, I looked there first. The pond jumped out of course, but what is that hot spot just south of the pond? The Christmas light castle house of course! And that is only an photo op for what 3-4 months? Probably feels like a lot longer to the neighbors I guess.
As much as I like this idea, I don't think that's it
If you zoom in on the full-size version, the cluster of (mostly locals) photos near Jamaica Pond is roughly at the corner of Centre St & Burroughs St, whereas the Christmas castle house is a few blocks away on the Arborway. I think those spots are just due to the bars & restaurants that are along that strip. There are a handful of spots near that house (mostly in blue), but not as many as I would have expected.
Someone tagged it on flickr
Someone tagged it on flickr suggesting it's the Sam Adams brewery. I can vouch for myself that it's the only time I've been south of Back Bay on the orange line.
The brewery is the red dot to
The brewery is the red dot to the east of Jamaica Pond. It's one of the few outlier reds.
I guess the habits of
I guess the habits of tourists vs locals are basically correct on this map, but I'll admit that I still can't walk through Copley Square without taking a picture of the Hancock Tower every time.
What's in Melrose?
There's a noticeable cluster of blue in Melrose, and it's not in the Fells. Any ideas?
Hunts?
A commenter on boston.com speculated it was Hunts Photo.