Yahoo! Travel recently ran an article on the 10 Most Photographed Places on Earth. Their approach to decipher which cities and landmarks within those cities qualify as the “most photographed” was actually based on a scientific study done a year earlier. Scientists will study anything. These Cornell scientists did a scientific review of Flickr photos to determine which cities and monuments were the top photographed and which angle was used most often. I don’t think the results will take anyone by surprise. the cities are all heavily traveled to by tourists and the monuments are the must see spots in each city. So there is nothing really shocking here. But what Yahoo! did was take it one step further and offer advice for how to go beyond the standard shot most people take of these landmarks. As photographers that is what we should be looking for, the unique perspective. Maybe the Empire State Building has been photographed millions of times but can we find that one angle that most shutterbugs miss and probably never even notice?
The top ten most photographed places on Earth according to Yahoo!’s study are:
10) Amsterdam – Dam Square
9)Rome – Colosseum
8) Seattle – Space Needle
7) Washington D.C. – Lincoln Memorial
6) Chicago – Cloud Gate sculpture
5) Los Angeles – Hollywood Walk of Fame
4) Paris – Eiffel Tower
3) San Francisco – Union Square
2) London – Trafalgar Square (my version above)
1) New York City – Empire State Building
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