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Vacation Photos That Inform Instead of Bore

Posted by Zonk on from the that-pool-looks-awesome dept.

A News.com story discusses the increasing trend towards adding metadata to casually created content. Their discussion centers around vacation photos taken with increasingly sophisticated cameras, and uploaded to ever more feature-rich websites. These photos, taken on a whim by snap-happy tourists, become invaluable for people wanting to follow in their footsteps. "It's the odd juxtapositions of randomly plotted photos that may be the most surprising--and useful--to travelers with more obscure interests. For example, fans of graffiti can search the word, 'graffiti,' and 'New York City' at Flickr.com/map, and pull up photos of freshly painted tags, all plotted with pushpins on a clickable Yahoo map. A search for 'Dumbo Brooklyn graffiti,' for example, finds some 99 photos, including the infamous 'Neck Face' tag, spray-painted on a brick warehouse at Jay and Front Streets in Brooklyn. Try finding that in a guidebook."

4 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Neck Face by magicchex · · Score: 3, Informative

    I had to search for "Neck Face" specifically to find it, as the suggested search terms brought up 700+ photos, not the 99 claimed.

    The Face Neck tag can be found here.

    --
    How many fulltime jobs can one man have?
  2. Re:Cool by Tribbin · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm not known for liking Microsoft, but check Photosynth:

    http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

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    If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
  3. Before you get too excited... by djupedal · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Try finding that in a guidebook."

    The 'Lonely Planet' book series made all the difference when I first came to Asia...even inside China, 15 ~ years back. I'm sure metadata will be huge, someday. But it follows on the heals of other terrific resources that have already 'been there, done that' and will continue for quite some time I am sure.

    I learned how to get the local Chinese police to help move me to my next destination - If you were caught inside the frontier, they were ordered to return you to the last city you visited. The trick was to tell them your next city instead of the last one - they would load you up and happily take you on to your next destination. Courtesy Lonely Planet - try finding that kind of help w/Flcker :)

    1. Re:Before you get too excited... by djupedal · · Score: 3, Informative

      "While you would be hard-pressed to convince me to return, I am glad I went."

      Reminds me of the one visit I paid to Compton, southern Calif, back in....1978? Except I wasn't the least bit glad I went.

      That person the train hit was most likely a suicide. Those uniforms were soldiers, assigned to ride the trains in case of trouble. Today, there are regular police, however, looking for baggage thieves, pickpockets, swindlers running cons, etc.

      Same as in Japan, except in Japan you are expected to not pull this kind of stunt either during rush hour, or on a busy line so as to cause the least trouble to the fewest commuters. They used to publish monthly listings of the best places to jump onto the tracks... I think in the last 5 years, I've seen less than 1/2 dozen bodies...mostly people from the country crossing busy streets or riding bicycles out in traffic.

      Those decade old photos should be up on Google/Picasso, as an example. China has changed in so many ways in just the last ten years...of course, many things have not, but to see the cities grow can be interesting, I think :)