Photographing London

In the last but one post I did something I thought Londoners never did: I went to Trafalgar Square with my camera, as if I was a tourist rather than a resident. In this case of course it was to snap away at the statue on the fourth plinth, namely Nelson's ship in a bottle.

But it appears I am most definitely not alone, as shown by the rather wonderful picture above. This is one from a series which make use of geotagging information loaded along with a photo to sites like flickr.

The data was analysed to work out who might be a local and who a tourist, based upon the fact visitors are likely to be only there for a few weeks while a local will have many pictures taken in the same town over many years. The red dots show the location of photos taken by tourists, blue locals and yellow indeterminate.

And it turns out that London is the Worlds No. 1 city (tempted to stop right there, but there is more) for being photographed by locals. So I was being a proper Londoner after all.

Soon I must go to get ready to cross this urban sprawl, as have been invited over to friends, and have been told to arrive by 7.30 pm. Now what might be happening around then?

Big hint: good luck England!!