Virtual Hotspots of Photography Locations:
If you are like me, you enjoy going out for a walk – in the opposite direction of the main flow of traffic! You’ll beat through the bush to find a trail that only you and the wild animals traverse, because lets face it: with so many photographers roaming the streets, and trails you can count on the fact that they have all stopped at that same tourist trap and have almost identical photos! Meanwhile, I will be casually taking a relaxing walk without the hassle of the public around. Of course this is all personal preference, and obviously I would love to see every tourist location if traveling to somewhere such as Europe!
With new technology and image uploading services by entities such as Flickr, Google Images/Maps, Panoramio, websites such sitesmap are born.
This is Sitesmaps.com
Sitemaps is a heatmap overlay over what I assume is Google Maps (although the logo seems to have disappeared on me). This overlay visually displays popular photography locations for tourists (or locals to avoid). It bases it’s popular shooting locations off of the catalogue on Panoramio. If there is a large number of images and authors uploading geotagged images from the same location… obviously the heat map will jump up. Unsurprisingly, the top 4 locations are all Europe based.
Check it out guys! Perhaps it will help guide your next vacation or shoot based of popular locations, or for other it will guide them further into Africa!