Very interesting map of the "Most Photographed Places".  I don't know the source but it does tell me I have a big problem living in central Europe.

more info:
"The http://www.sightsmap.com/ website is an interactive map that allows you to see which areas of the world have had the most photographs taken -- in other words, every place you should avoid if you wish to take a unique photograph. Europe is remarkably popular. North Pole not so much.

    The heatmaps are based solely on the number of available Panoramio photos for an area: both the number of photos and the number of authors is taken into account.

    The dark and the blue areas have a few photos, the red areas have more and the yellow areas have a large number of photos geotagged."

and like all Google Maps, you scale down to the street level

Or maybe panoramio is popular in Europe and not so much elsewhere.

I bet a few hundred K from the N pole has a lot less photos than the N pole.

I am in an area that is not very photographed but is world rank: 2119 and another that is world rank: 2820 and world rank: 2926 and as well as world rank: 25.

I think photos from all of these "most photographed" places sell because they are key tourist destinations. More than half my stock photo portfolio is travel and I find that the more popular a destination is, the more often photos from there sell. I have photos, for example, of Rome (Ranked #2) that I took with my old D70 from 2007 and they still sell today as do the handful of photos I took in Boston a few years ago during the few hours that it wasn't raining (Rank #45). My best sellers include some of the most photographed lighthouses in the US (ranked in the 2000s-10,000 worldwide - all yellow on the map -so still pretty high) - especially some of the most popular on Cape Cod and up in Maine - photos of those very heavily photographed areas sell well and although there are many shots of the same lighthouses I have, despite the competition they sell frequently.

My rarer shots from more out of the way places sell far less often. So, I wouldn't really worry so much about a place being too popular. IMHO there's still a market for good travel shots of popular destinations.

It could be interesting to know who is photographing the Most Photographed Places.

Japanese? Korean? Chinese? Liechtensteiners?

Anyone who lives or travels there.
I guess what you're really meaning is 'what is the demographic of those who upload most to Panoramio?'.

All I know is that when I travel I will not be carrying along my Canon neck breaker camera! I will bring my little OLY 4 by 3 mirrorless camera and enjoy my vacation and not worry about stock photography.

it's kinda creepy that this information is available and tracked... what else is being tracked?

That same map also looks like a population density map. Maybe those places are he most photographed because that's where the most people live.

Well no wonder europe and the western countries have the most photographed places.. The most camera owners live in these regions 

But the first name is collecting personal data is still Facebook. Ever notice how many places you can just sign in with your Facebook account? How strange is that? And people voluntarily post all their personal thoughts and information on FB!

Google just collects the data that we already put somewhere else.

The most photographed places is looking at geotags. More people and more people with smartphones = more geotags. It's nothing but the obvious. More photos are taken where there are more people.

Let me restate that. There's no useful information in that map for producing stock images that will have a better demand or sell better. Not a speck! The map could have been titled, where are the most people, with smartphones...
.

Quote from: oxman on December 16, 2013, 17:11

it's kinda creepy that this information is available and tracked... what else is being tracked?

Big Brother has a name . . . . . Google.

Then let's say FB is Big Brother's Evil Twin.