Eric Fisher created the Geotagger’s World Atlas. An interactive map showing geographic data collected from Flickr’s geotagged photos. The lines and their density show the parts of areas where people took a sequence of images.
Eric also analyzed the geotagging data to try and determine which images were tourists and which were from locals. He took snap shots and posted them to a flickr set. They are fascinating to browse around. Here is his map of the Twin Cities.
Eric Fisher’s Locals and Tourists of the Twin Cities
Blue are locals.
Red are tourists.
Yellow are may be either (I wish this contrasted better, its a bit hard to make out).
You can see the Mall of America is quite red especially in the center where the indoor amusement park is. The Sculpture Garden has a lot of blue and red, but across the highway Loring Park is pretty much just locals.
The Washington Ave Bridge is a tourist draw, as is Loop of the Stone Arch Bridge, Main Street, and the Hennepin Ave Bridge with a concentration by the Mill Ruins. Nicollet Mall, the Hennepin Ave entertainment district both are tourist draws, with 7th and Nicollet a strong concentration.
There are tiny pocket that stand out, too. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts stands out as a tiny pocket of tourists. Uptown (surprisingly?) gets a lot of local photos but rarely tourist photos. Minneapolis gets a lot more geotagged images compared to St. Paul.
The Fairgrounds really pop out, too. Fascinating map!
Yet another interesting comparison, which campuses are photogenic. Macalester gets photo’d, St. Thomas doesn’t really for instance.
That is weird. Hamline, St. Thomas, St. Kate’s and Concordia all have twice as many students as Macalester, but Macalester has wayyy more photos than the others.
Yeah I don’t think its how photogenic the campus is. St. Catherine is more photogenic than Mac, and there are no pictures there. Clearly Mac kids just use Flickr more.
I suspect there are several factors at play:
1) Lots of businesses on Grand/Snelling, including restaurants (food photos, spouse photos) and Common Good Books (readings with well-known authors)
2) Macalester has more events open to the public, and those events often have better-known speakers or more widely-interesting topics
3) Macalester’s student body is more geographically diverse, so parents who take pictures at graduation might be marked as tourists at a higher rate than the predominantly-Minnesotan families at the others
Also, perhaps even more importantly, Macalester has a more prestigious photography/studio art program.
curious if that red route along the river downtown aligns with the segway tours?