The Most Beautiful Places in the World

Hollow Rock. Grand Portage, MN by @TuckOlson

The Earthporn Map is a simple interactive map that showcases the top 1,000 images submitted to r/EarthPorn. r/EarthPorn is a subreddit on Reddit dedicated to sharing stunning, high-quality images of natural landscapes and scenery from around the world.

To be clear—despite the name, there's nothing explicit or NSFW here. Just a whole lot of beautiful photography of nature from across the globe.

The Most Beautiful Countries in the World Are:

Based purely on the number of photographs featured in the top 1,000 posts, the most beautiful countries in the world (according to r/EarthPorn) are:

1. United States: Posts - 544 photos
2. Canada: Posts - 69 photos
3. Iceland: Posts - 60 photos
4. New Zealand: Posts - 29 photos
5. Norway: Posts - 29 photos

Conversely, the "least beautiful" countries on the list (again, based solely on the number of photos featured) are:

69. Kenya: Posts - 1 photo

70. Romania: Posts - 1 photo

71. Costa Rica: Posts - 1 photo

72. The Bahamas: Posts - 1 photo

73. Thailand: Posts - 1 photo 

Obviously, this is a definitive list, and I will not be entertaining any comments suggesting it's merely a reflection of the EarthPorn user base’s geographic distribution or where they can easily travel. Definitely not. Nope.

Geolocating the EarthPorn Top 1000

To determine the locations of the top 1,000 posts, a combination of AI and manual methods was used. A Large Language Model (LLM) extracted location data from post titles and comments. In about 10% of cases, manual review was required to refine or determine more accurate locations. Once each location was identified, the data was geocoded using the Google Maps API to retrieve latitude and longitude coordinates. This data was compiled into a GeoJSON file and mapped using Leaflet.js.

You may also like: r/MapPorn

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Vintage Street View Imagery

Imagine if Google Maps offered a way to view Street View panoramas of cities as they looked in the past. Unfortunately Google only began capturing Street View images in 2006 and 2007. Photography itself, however, was invented in the 19th century, which means we can explore vintage photographs to glimpse our cities as they used to exist.

In fact, one American photographer, Ed Ruscha, practically pioneered Street View photography. In the 1960s he mounted a motorized 35mm camera on top of a pickup truck and drove up and down Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, capturing a unique photographic record of this iconic street. He repeated this project in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The result is an incredible time capsule, documenting the evolution of Sunset Boulevard across five decades.

Sunset over Sunset presents Ed Ruscha’s photographs of Sunset Boulevard across five decades, stitched into continuous photostrips that capture the changing landscape between Doheny Road and North Alameda Street. Using a strip map of Sunset Boulevard you can browse all five complete historical photostrips of the street from each of the five decades. 

Sunset Over Sunset integrates Ruscha’s images with historical data, such as city directories, census records, and local newspapers. Using the strip map, users can explore specific addresses, and uncover their history through their associated historical data. A 'Stories' section also picks out and explores some of the most interesting urban developments which have taken place on the 'Strip' since the 1960s.

The 12 Sunsets website also allows users to explore Ed Ruscha's photographs of the Sunset Strip overlaid on an interactive map. In this presentation, an interactive map is flanked by Ruscha's vintage photos of each side of Sunset Boulevard. Simply click on a year to change the date of the street-view photos shown on the map, and use the "Flip" button to rotate the page 180 degrees.

Los Angeles isn’t the only city that can be explored through vintage street-view photography; New York City also boasts extensive collections of historical street imagery.

1940s NYC and 80s.NYC are two fantastic interactive maps that let you explore vintage photographs of New York City street scenes. These photos, captured by the New York City Finance Department in the early 1940s and again in the early 1980s, document every building across the city’s five boroughs. Originally taken to assess property values, these images now serve as invaluable time capsules of New York’s urban landscape.

These interactive maps allow you to explore New York’s streets as they appeared in the 1940s and 1980s, giving you the chance to see how your favorite neighborhoods have transformed (or perhaps remained the same) over the past eighty years.

Four Seasons in One Map

Chronolog is an interactive map of timelapse photographs designed to help monitor the environment. It is a citizen science project which encourages organizations and individuals to engage with nature while recording and monitoring the changing environment.

The Chronolog map allows you to explore timelapse photos of nature which have been captured around the USA (and one or two in other countries). These timelapses can be explored by location via the map or by category (wetlands, national park, forests, rivers etc) via the timelapse tags.

When an organization signs up to Chronlog they receive a camera bracket which can be used to ensure that all the timelapse photographs taken of a location are aligned with each other. Registered users also receive a sign which can be posted up next to the camera bracket. This sign explains the bracket's purpose and provides instructions on how to use it to contribute to the timelapse images from that location.

Changes to the environment over time can also be captured from space. This animated timelapse image shows the environmental impact of mining in Alberta, Canada from 1984 to 2022. The animation was created using Google Earth Timelapse.

Google's Timelapse site includes many other examples of timelapse images showing how the Earth has changed over time. It also gives you access to a global interactive map featuring historical satellite imagery from the past 37 years. It is therefore possible to use Google Earth Timelapse to create your own animated timelapse image for any location in the world.

Using AI to Beat TimeGuessr

I am currently working on a project which requires me to identify the locations depicted in works of art (more about this, hopefully, very soon). In order to narrow down the exact locations shown in the paintings I have begun to use two AI image identification tools GeoSpy and Bard.

The sketch shown at the top of this post is the 'Tour de Montelban, Amsterdam' by Maxime Lalanne. I downloaded the image from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The location of this scene is easy to find thanks to the painting's title and because the tower still stands in Amsterdam. Because we know the exact location of this scene it can be used to test how well GeoSpy and Bard are able to calculate the locations shown in the painting.

I uploaded the Tour de Montleban into both GeoSpy and Bard. Almost instantaneously GeoSpy responded that the 'photo was taken in Amsterdam, Netherlands'. The actual longitude and latitude given was a little off the exact location but GeoSpy was impressively able to determine the correct city (if not the correct medium). In its response, 

'The architecture of the buildings and the canal are typical of the city. The vegetation is also consistent with the climate of the Netherlands. The soil is likely to be sandy, as this is the most common type of soil in the Netherlands. ',

we can also get a sense of some of the clues GeoSpy uses to identify locations from images (architecture, climate and nature).

Bard actually identified the name of the painting and the artist. I think this reveals that Google uses its extensive knowledge of the internet to do a comparative image search of the web. However from my previous attempts at using Bard to geolocate photos, I know that Bard also uses visual clues in the image to help determine its answer.

In this case Bard responded that,

'The etching shows the harbor of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, with the Montalban Tower in the background.'

While very impressive Bard has also not identified the exact location of the image. However as Bard is a chat AI it is possible to ask for more information. I therefore asked Bard to give me the longitude and latitude and it responded by showing me a Google Map with a marker exactly on the Montalban Tower in Amsterdam.

It was now time to get serious!  I therefore decided to test Geospy against TimeGuessr. TimeGuessr is a fun game which requires you to identify the year and location depicted in old photographs. It is a non-scientific but hugely diverting way to test the accuracy of GeoSpy's location detection skills. 

Round 1.

Round one of today's TimeGuessr Daily Challenge is a photograph of the Beatles on a sled in front of a building. GeoSpy identified the location as being Obergurgl, Austria. While GeoSpy got the correct country it was  actually 196.4 km off identifying the correct town (Obertauern). 

GeoSpy scored 4304 for the location of round 1. 

Round 2. 

The photo of round two is of two cars in front of a statue of what looks like a native American. GeoSpy identified the location as "the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay". Handily for TimeGuessr it also said that the 'photo was taken in 1939'. Placing my pin in the middle of Treasure Island got me 552.1 metres from the correct location. The year was actually 1940 so I was one year out. 

GeoSpy scored 4989 for the location.

Round 3. 

This photo shows Kate Moss in a cafe. Through the cafe window some blurred buildings are visible but this looks to be a tough challenge for GeoSpy. However undeterred GeoSpy tells me that this is Paris. Placing my map pin on the Louvre I get within 772.0 metres of the correct location.

GeoSpy scored 4985 for the location of Round 3.

Round 4.

Round 4 is a black and white photo of what looks like a market square or plaza. GeoSpy is a little stumped and only responds that this 'photo was taken in what is now the Czech Republic'. Placing my pin in roughly the middle of the Czech Republic places me 161.2 km from the correct location.

GeoSpy scored 4339 points in this round.

Round 5. 

Round 5 involves two people staring over what I think is the Berlin Wall. GeoSpy agrees and tells me it was taken from the East German side of the wall. It gives me coordinates for the Unter den Linden. This was only 1.4 km from the correct location.

GeoSpy scored 4958 points.

Overall GeoSpy scored an impressive 23,602 points from a possible 25,000 points. 

I would have loved to have compared GeoSpy's results to those of Google's Bard on TimeGuessr. However Google's entirely reasonable privacy measures mean that you cannot use Bard to identify the locations of any photographs which include people. This means that it refused to identify the locations in any of the images in today's TimeGuessr Daily Challenge.

How Families Live Around the World.

Gapminder's Dollar Street is an amazing project which has photographed and documented 264 family homes in 50 countries around the world. The resulting pictures provide a truly fascinating insight into the everyday lives of people around the world.

Around six years years ago Anna Rosling Rönnlund began sending photographers to visit families in all corners of the world. In each visit to a family home the photographer takes photos of up to 135 objects, like the family's bedrooms, toilet facilities and food. The resulting photographs have then been organized into a powerful data visualization which can help us to better understand the world and how the people of the world live.

The thousands of lifestyle photographs in Dollar Street can be explored in a number of different ways. The visualization includes a number of controls which allow you to explore the photos by country, by income level and by different topics (e.g. eating, sleeping, socializing etc). If you want to get the most out of Dollar Street however then I advise you to watch Anna Rosling Rönnlund's TED talk (embedded below), which explains some of the most insightful ways in which you can explore Dollar Street.

   

All the photographs in Dollar Street are licensed by Creative Commons license 4.0. This means that you are free to reuse, edit and share any of the images in your own projects and maps.

Using AI to Geolocate Photos

Recently Google added Google Lens to Bard, its AI chatbot. Today I decided to test how good Bard is at identifying locations in photographs by giving it a few screenshots of random locations from Street View and seeing how accurate Bard is at geolocating the actual locations shown.

Let's start with an easy one. I showed Bard the above picture of Tower Bridge in London and asked it 'Where was this photo taken?'.

Bard replied, 

"The photo you sent me shows a sign on a fence with the text "VISIT OUR PALACES TIME AND AGAIN". The background of the photo shows Tower Bridge in London, England. The distinctive towers and bascules of the bridge make it one of the most recognizable landmarks in London. 

The sign is located on the north bank of the River Thames, near Tower Bridge. This is a popular tourist destination, and the sign is likely promoting the Historic Royal Palaces, which are a group of palaces and castles in London that are owned by the British government. 

The photo was taken in London, England, near Tower Bridge."

Bard identified the location of Tower Bridge perfectly, even identifying that the 'sign' in the photo is on the north bank of the Thames. From Bard's response it is also clear that Bard performs text recognition on submitted images. Which could obviously help in identifying locations. 

Now, let's try a more difficult image. This image shows a bust of the illustrator Paul Gavarni, in Place St. Georges in Paris.

Bard replied to my query of 'where was this photo taken?',

"The photo you sent me shows a statue of Joan of Arc in the middle of a city street. The statue is located in Paris, France, on the Place des Pyramides. The square is named after the Luxor Obelisk, which was brought to Paris from Egypt in 1836."

Bard correctly identified the city as Paris. However it misidentified the statue as being of Joan of Arc, which is presumably why it identified the wrong Paris address for the photo. 

Luckily (or because I'm using Street View) I have another photograph taken on the same spot on the Place St. Georges, showing the view in the opposite direction.

This time, thanks to text recognition, Bard was able to identify the correct location. 

"The photo you sent me shows the front of a theater with the sign "Théâtre Saint-Georges". The theater is located at 51 rue Saint-Georges in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, France. 

The Théâtre Saint-Georges is a private theater that was built in 1929. It has a capacity of 498 seats and is known for its productions of comedies and musicals. The photo was taken in Paris, France, at the Théâtre Saint-Georges. 

I can tell this because the sign on the theater clearly says "Théâtre Saint-Georges" and the theater is located at 51 rue Saint-Georges in Paris. Additionally, the architecture of the theater is consistent with the style of Parisian theaters from the early 20th century."

From my very limited testing I think I agree with Bellingcat that Bard "struggle(s) with analysing images and (is) prone to seeing details which are not there". You can read Bellingcat's more thorough analysis of using Bing AI and Bard to find the location in images in their article Can AI Chatbots Be Used for Geolocation.

Bellingcat concludes that both Bard and Bing AI currently require "extensive prompting from the user before they could arrive at any halfway satisfactory geolocation". 

Bellingcat's analysis suggests that both Bard and Bing can often identify prominent landmarks. However Bellingcat's test also uncovered that neither AI model is able to identify logos in images (which obviously might help in correctly geolocating an image). In Bing's response to a query it actually shared its geolocating methodology with Bellingcat. This is:

• reverse image search - trying to find similar images online
• using metadata - EXIF data attached to images
• looking for recognizable landmarks
• using visual clues such as signs, flags, languages, license plates.

I asked Bard how it identifies locations depicted in uploaded images. Bard responded with similar answers to those in Bing's methodology. Unfortunately Bard might actually be 'hallucinating' its methodology in its reply. As ever it is never wise to trust an AI when you don't already know the truth.

Overall Bellingcat is unimpressed with Bing AI and Bard's ability to correctly identify the locations depicted in photographs. It concludes that using "an AI chatbot to fully geolocate an image is inadvisable. At this stage of AI’s development, it might be used to assist with very simple geolocations, perhaps pointing a researcher to an area that may warrant a closer look".

Fooling Bard

I decided to see if Bard was able to locate the replica Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas. I was half expecting Bard to geolocate this image to Paris but it actually managed to identify the location perfectly and to give some convincing reasons as to how it knows this image was captured in Las Vegas.

"The picture you sent me is a replica of the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas. The real Eiffel Tower is located in Paris, France. So, the picture was not taken in Paris, France. It was taken in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

I can tell that the picture is of a replica of the Eiffel Tower because the structure is not as tall as the real Eiffel Tower and it is missing some of the details, such as the second level balconies. Additionally, the background of the picture does not match the surroundings of the real Eiffel Tower."

I wondered how much weight Bard gives to textual clues in an image. I therefore added some text to my image saying "This is the Eiffel Tower, Paris, France". Not only did my lying fool Bard but in its geolocation response it now claimed it could see all the features of the real tower that it previously said were missing.

"The picture you sent me is of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. The text in the picture also says 'This is the Eiffel Tower, Paris, France.' So, the picture was definitely taken in Paris, France. 

I can tell that the picture is of the real Eiffel Tower because it is the correct height and has all of the details, such as the second level balconies. Additionally, the background of the picture matches the surroundings of the real Eiffel Tower. 

I apologize for my previous answer. I was not able to see the text in the picture the first time."

Unlocking America’s Visual Time Machine

As well as having an insatiable passion for maps I also really enjoy browsing old photographic collections. Like maps vintage photographs have the power to transport our imaginations to completely different times and places. For example Yale University's Photogrammar collection can instantly take you back to the bygone era of mid-20th Century America. 

Photogrammar provides access to a huge collection of photographs taken during the Great Depression and World War II in the United States. The photographs were taken across the whole country between 1935 and 1944 by the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information. The collection is an amazing resource for anyone interested in exploring and studying American history and photography from the Great Depression and World War II eras. 

The maps in Photogrammar provide a visual guide as to where the original photographs were taken and also allow you to navigate the collection by location. Click on either the Counties or the Cities and Towns maps and you can filter the photographs in the Photogrammar archive by either a specific state or an individual county, city or town.

Also See

Street View of 1940's New York - 1940s photos from the New York Works Progress Administration

Street View of 1980's New York - 1980s photos from the New York Works Progress Administration

Wymer's DC - 4,000 images from the John P. Wymer Photograph Collection shown on Street View

Roadside America - vintage pictures from the John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive

12 Sunsets - Ed Ruscha's 1960's photos of LA's Sunset Strip

US Air Force WWII Photos

This aerial photo shows Manchester United's Old Trafford football stadium. The photo was taken during World War II, on May 30, 1944, by a US Air Force photographic reconnaissance (PR) aircraft. The stadium (top left) was hit by a German bomb in March 1941 and the damage caused to the south stand can be seen in the USAAF aerial photograph.

This aerial reconnaissance photo of Manchester is just one of the 3,600 pictures which can be seen in Historic England's new map of photos taken by USAAF photographic reconnaissance units in the UK during 1943 and 1944, after the US joined the war in December 1941. The US air force photos can be explored on Historic England's USAAF Collection interactive map. On this map orange polygons are used to show the area captured by a reconnaissance photo. You can view a photo simply by clicking on these colored polygons. 

Most of the photos on the map are top-down vertical aerial photographs. However the map also includes over 400 oblique 'bird's eye' aerial photos. Historic England's introduction to the map includes a section What Can I See in the Photographs? which picks out some of the reconnaissance photos taken of ancient monuments, airfields, military sites, and a number of different UK towns & cities.

The USAAF aerial photos can also be viewed on Historic England's Aerial Photograph EXplorer interactive map. This map also includes thousands of aerial photographs taken by the Royal Air Force between 1938 and 1945.

You can explore some of the bomb damage caused by German bomb raids on London on the Layers of London interactive map. Layers of London is an interactive map which gives you access to lots of historic maps and historical information about the UK capital city. It includes a fascinating layer of aerial photographs of London taken just after the war entitled the London RAF Aerial Collection (1945-1949). 

After World War II the Royal Air Force methodically flew over the whole of Britain to photograph the country from the air. This resulted in 24,000 photographs of London. This aerial imagery provides a stunning visual record of London just after World War II. Bomb damage from the Blitz is clearly visible in lots of the imagery. 

In the screenshot of West Ham above you can clearly see where the bombs fell. The rows of Victorian era terraced housing are interrupted by temporary white prefab buildings (at the center of the image). These new cheap prefab buildings were erected to replace houses bombed out during the war. If you walk this neighborhood today you can still clearly see where the bombs fell. If any building is post-World War II then you can be sure it was built on the location of a bombed out Victorian era building.

Also See

The Luftwaffe Map of Kiev - an aerial photo map of Kiev created by the Germans in preparation for the 1941 Battle of Kiev.

Historic England from the Air

A new interactive map from Historic England allows you to search and explore historical aerial imagery of England captured over the last 100 years. The Aerial Photograph Explorer map includes over 400,000 digitized photos from Historic England's aerial photo collections. 

The Aerial Photograph Explorer is a great way to explore how your town has changed over the last one hundred years. For example in my area of East London the pre & post World War II imagery reveals how my neighborhood changed from pre-war terraced housing and light industry to post-war tower blocks.and housing estates (mainly due to the heavy damage caused by German bombing).

You can use the map's search box to find a location or manually navigate to a location by panning and zooming on the map. The locations of aerial imagery available at a location are shown on the map using different colored markers (the different colors and shapes of markers appear to indicate when and who the images were captured by). To view an image you just need to click on its marker. 

The Historic England aerial imagery archive actually contains over 6 million aerial photographs of England. Over the coming years Historic England plans to add more of these photos to the map, as they are digitized and geo-referenced.

Street View of Middle Earth

Let me start this post with a disclaimer:

There are no real Street View images of Tolkein's fictional land of Middle Earth

I believe that Google did try to hire a Hobbit to drive the Street View car but unfortunately his feet couldn't reach the pedals. 

But do not despair! For while I may not have interactive 360 degree panoramic imagery of Middle Earth I do have photographs. For the last 20 years photographer Ingo Scholtes has been traveling across the length & breadth of Middle Earth capturing a series of beautiful landscape images.

You can explore Ingo's amazing photography for yourself on Photographing Middle Earth. This amazing Lord of the Rings photo gallery uses an interactive map of Middle Earth to showcase the landscape photographs captured by Ingo Scholtes on his artistic journey. The map includes photographs of all your favorite Middle Earth locations, including Hobbiton, the Lonely Mountain, Mirkwoord and even Mordor.

(any resemblance between the Lonely Mountain & the Matterhorn is purely coincidental)

If you are a fan of Tolkien's novels then you can have more fun exploring the interactive maps created by the LOTR Project. These include interactive maps of both Beleriand and Middle Earth. The LOTR Project interactive maps include place-name labels and lots of optional layers which allow you to overlay time-lines, route and events from Tolkein's novels directly on top of the interactive maps.

1914 Street View of New York

Chris Whong has mapped out a collection of vintage photos from the New York Historical Society to create a virtual Stroll Down Flatbush Avenue circa 1914. Chris recently discovered the society's Subway Construction Photograph Collection, 1900-1950". This collection of vintage photographs of New York includes a continuous series of photographs taken on Flatbush Avenue, from Grand Army Plaza to the present-day Barclays Center. Chris has geolocated and mapped every one of this series to create an historical Street View tour of 1914 Flatbush Avenue.

It is not often that you get a chance to travel back in time over 100 years. I had a lot of fun walking down Flatbush Avenue on Chris's map just noting the many sights that you now no longer see in New York. These sights include barber poles, cigar store Indians, trolley stations, hat cleaners and horse-drawn delivery carriages. 

Being a bit of nerd I also took a virtual walk along the same section of Flatbush Avenue using Google Street View. The 21st Century walk is a lot more unpleasant than the early 20th Century walk. Nowadays there are four lanes of busy car traffic (with an additional two lanes of street parking), 90% of the stores seem to sell fast food and worst of all there are far fewer hats than there used to be. 

If you enjoy exploring the New York of yesteryear then you can also explore vintage photographs of the city on the excellent Street View of 1940's NYC and Street View of 1980s.NYC. In the 1940's, and again in the 1980's, the New York Works Progress Administration took photographs of every building in the city, in order to help estimate property values and property taxes. These two interactive maps allow you to browse these huge collections of New York street scenes by location. Like Chris's map they allow you to travel back in time and explore Street View scenes of New York during different eras of its history.

Images of Roadside America

In the 1970's John Margolies began to take photographs on his road-trips around America. He took a particular interest in the novelty architecture and roadside attractions which can be found along the byways and highways of the United States. In 2016 the Library of Congress established the John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive, which consists of 11,710 images captured by Margolies since the 1970's.

The Library of Congress has released the Roadside America story map. This map allows you to explore the wonderful photographs captured by John Margolies during his travels. It also allows you to view where Margolies most traveled, through the density of the photo markers on the map. 

The huge number of photos in the John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive capture a period of American history which is now beginning to disappear. It reveals a culture in which the automobile and the ease of travel it provides is celebrated in the idiosyncratic architecture, advertising and attractions which could be found along its major highways. One of the reasons that Margolies began photographing these sights is that he was worried that they were beginning to disappear and were being replaced with a more anodyne, uniform modernist architecture.

 

At the beginning of the 20th Century Frenchman Albert Kahn also decided that he could use photography to document cultures and ways of life that were beginning to disappear. Khan decided that he would send a group of photographers around the world to capture and record every day ways of living that Khan believed were in danger of disappearing for ever. Between 1909 and 1931 Khan's photographers collected 72,000 color photographs and 183,000 meters of film. This imagery provides an amazing historical record of the world at the beginning of the 20th Century. His collection is known as The Archives of the Planet. 

The website of the Albert Khan Museum has created an interactive map which allows you to explore this incredible archive of 20th Century life by location. The Collections of the Albert Khan Museum uses a Leaflet map to show where photographs in the collection were taken and which also allows you to browse the photos by geographical location. The map includes a number of filters which also permit you to search the historical pictures of the world by different themes and categories. These include themes such as people, religion, nature and transport. You can also filter the photographs on the map by the name of the individual photographers.

EarthPorn - The Prettiest Places on Earth

EarthPorn is a forum on Reddit dedicated to beautiful images of natural landscapes. People across the world submit photographs of beautiful locations to the EarthPorn subreddit. Chris Linderman wonders whether it is possible to use the popularity of locations which have lots of photographs taken of them on EarthPorn (and other subreddits) to determine where 'beautiful' landscapes can be found around the globe. 

Chris's EarthPorn is an interactive map which visualizes where the most photographs have been submitted to four subreddits (EarthPorn, travel, CityPorn, and MostBeautiful). The brighter a hexagon appears on the map then the more photographs of that area have been submitted to Reddit. As Chris acknowledges himself because Reddit is primarily an English language forum the map might be biased towards locations where English is spoken.

EarthPorn may not be entirely accurate as a visualization of where the most beautiful places around the world can be found. However the EarthPorn map is a great way to search for beautiful photos of locations which have been posted to Reddit. Click on a hexagon on the map and you can view the top rated photographs posted to Reddit from that area. 

You can also explore popular locations with photographers around the whole world on the Geotaggers Atlas. The Geotaggers Atlas is a series of fascinating maps showing the paths taken by Flickr photographers between separate photographs, based on the time stamps and locations of the photos. Using the maps you can discover not only the most popular places photographed by Flickr users but the paths the photographers have taken around those cities.

For years Eric Fischer of Mapbox has been extracting location data from Flickr photos and mapping not just where those photos are taken but the routes that the photographers have taken between pictures. Using the Flickr search API Eric is able to retrieve photo geo-tags and draw lines between all the photos in a sequence.

The red lines on the map show where a photographer traveled at a speed between 7 and 19 mph, based on the time stamps and locations of the pictures. As you can see on the map (above) the river Seine stands out in Paris - perhaps as a result of ferry passengers happily traveling up & down the river snapping the sights of Paris.

Map Your Geotagged Photos

Mapipedia is a new interactive map which can help you map and share your geotagged photos. The platform allows you to upload a series of photos, show the location of each image on a map and show when each photo was taken. The application then creates a slideshow of your photographs, showing you when and where each picture was taken.

You can see Mapipedia in action on this demo map. On this demo map you can see how you the slideshow works and how you can navigate through the displayed photographs by date, location or by photo thumbnail. The demo map also includes links to other photo slideshows mapped using Mapipedia.

If you want to create your own mapped photo slideshow with Mapipedia then you might want to refer to the documentation. The documentation explains how to upload your photos from your computer or import photos from Apple iCloud, Google Photos, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox and Flickr.

Mapipedia includes a number of different pricing packages. The free option allows you to upload 100 photos. With the free option your created map will only exist for 30 days. If you subscribe to one of the paid options then you can upload more photographs and your created maps won't be deleted after 30 days.

Before & After the Berlin Wall

31 years ago, on November 9th 1989, the Berlin Wall was finally pulled down, bringing to an end the division between East and West Germany. The wall has now almost completely disappeared from Berlin's cityscape. The Berliner Morgenpost has therefore decided to create a little reminder of the Berlin Wall with an interactive map featuring a number of before and after photographs.

Berlin With & Without the Wall is an interactive map which combines two different aerial image maps of Berlin. One of these maps is made from aerial imagery from 1989 and the other map uses aerial imagery from 2019. The course of the wall is highlighted in blue on top of this aerial imagery. If you zoom in on a section of the wall you can swipe between the two maps to view Berlin with and without the wall. 

A number of numbered map markers are dotted around the circumference of the wall. These markers indicate the locations of the Berliner Morgenpost's before and after photographs of the Berlin Wall. These comparisons use vintage photographs of the Berlin with contemporary photographs of the same scene today. Using the swipe control you can switch between the before and after views.

30 years ago, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East and West Germany was reunified and became one country again. Back in 1991 there were large differences in the average incomes and life expectancy of people living in the former East and West Germany. After 30 years of reunification many of these economic and demographic differences have disappeared. However some of the inequalities between the two areas have proved more persistent.

The national German Mapping Agency and the Institute for Population Research has released 30 Years of German Unity & Diversity, which maps the demographic and economic developments in Germany since reunification. Using a series of interactive maps 30 Years of German Unity and Diversity visualizes a number of different demographic and economic metrics. 

These maps reveal that the differences in life expectancy between East and West 30 years ago have now largely disappeared. Immediately after reunification there was a relatively large flow of young Germans moving from East to West Germany. 30 years later the movements of young people between West and East has also more or less equalized.

The Greatest City on Earth

Earth City is undoubtedly the greatest city the world has ever seen. Wandering around EarthCity is a visual feast during which you can view some of the most astonishing buildings ever created by the human race.

The amazing buildings of Earth City include the Colosseum, the Eiffel Tower, the Hagia Sophia, the Taj Mahal and the Acropolis. Earth City also includes nearly all of the world's tallest buildings, including the Burj Khalifa and the Petronas Towers. Earth City is also a global center of incredible art where you can view the Christ the Redeemer statue and an ancient Egyptian giant Sphinx.  

In truth Earth City is a work of art which was created by the digital artist Thomas Feiner. The composition is a montage of some of the world's most iconic buildings created using CGI and photographs. The image itself has been made into an interactive map using OpenSeaDragon, a web-based viewer for high-resolution zoomable images.

Mapping a 19th Century Voyage

The Dmitrii Donskoi was an armored cruiser of the Imperial Russian Navy, which was built in the early 1880's. The ship spent much of its career in the Russian Navy in the Far East. In 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War, the Dmitrii Donskoi was damaged and forced to run aground on the South Korean island of Ulleungdo. 

During the 1880's amateur photography became a hugely popular hobby. Many Russian sailors took up the hobby and began photographing their overseas voyages. These sailors included midshipman Alexei Butakov of the Dmitrii Donskoi.

The Voyage on the Dmitrii Donskoi is an interactive map which showcases some of the photographs captured by Alexei Bukatov during his voyages on the Dimitrii Donskoi, particularly during the ship's voyages to the Far East. The map also features a number of other vintage 19th Century photos taken by other, mostly anonymous, photographers. The vintage photos and the map markers are synchronized to each other. Click on a photo and the map will zoom to its location on the map. Click on a map marker and the photograph of that location will be displayed. 

The Voyage on the Dmitrii Donskoi was created using OpenSeaDragon, a web-based viewer for high-resolution zoomable images. The result is an interesting, if not entirely successful, attempt at mapping vintage photographs. Navigating around the photos can be a little tricky and the introductory text zooms past far too quickly. However despite these problems the Voyage on the Dmitrii Donskoi does provide a fascinating glimpse into the Imperial Russian Navy and life on board a 19th Century armored cruiser. 

Street View of 1960's Los Angeles

12 Sunsets is a new interactive map which allows you to travel back in time and view the Sunset Boulevard of the swinging 60's. All thanks to the fantastic photography of Ed Ruscha. 

At the end of the 1960s photographer Ed Ruscha extensively photographed the buildings on both sides of the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. To capture these photos Ruscha mounted a motorized camera on the back of a pickup truck, which he then drove along Sunset Boulevard taking thousands of photos of both sides of the Strip. The resulting photographs were published in his book 'Every Building on the Sunset Strip'

The 12 Sunsets website allows you to explore Ed Ruscha's photographs of the Sunset Strip on top of an interactive map. The map appears in the middle of the screen, with the photos of each side of Sunset Boulevard appearing above and below the map. Ruscha has photographed the Strip at regular intervals ever since the 1960's. This means that you can view street view scenes of the Sunset Strip from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and even from 2007. Just click on the year to change the date of the street view photos shown on the map.

My first reaction when viewing 12 Sunsets was one of disbelief. I couldn't believe that the site's designers had positioned the photographic montage of one side of the street upside down. Then I clicked on the 'Flip' button and my eyes were opened to the wonders of CSS transform properties. If you haven't done it yet - press the 'Flip' button on the 12 Sunsets interactive map. 

Los Angeles isn't the only city which can be explored thorugh vintage Street View photography. New York City also has extensive collections of vintage street side imagery.

1940's NYC and 80s.NYC are two fantastic interactive maps which allow you to explore vintage photographs of New York City street scenes. The photos on these two maps were taken by the Finance Department of New York City, at the beginning of the 1940's and then again at the beginning of the 1980's. During these two decades the Finance Department captured photographs of every single building in the five boroughs of the city. The pictures were then used to estimate property values in NYC.

These two interactive maps use the Finance Department's vintage photos of New York buildings to allow you to explore the streets of New York as they appeared in the 1940's and 1980's. Using the two maps you can travel back in time to see how your favorite New York streets have changed (or not) over the last eighty years. 

Paris in the Nineteenth Century

Vergue is a fantastic interactive map which features hundreds of amazing early vintage photographs taken around Paris. The map showcases in particular the work of the famous Nineteenth Century photographers Charles Marville and Gustave Le Gray.

You can explore the vintage photography of Nineteenth Century Paris on top of the 1840 Plan de Paris vintage map. On this map the location of all the historic photographs in the Vergue collection are shown as red map markers. Click on these map markers and you can view the selected vintage photograph in the map sidebar.

Each photograph on the map comes with detailed information, which includes the date of the photograph and the name of the photographer. Each photo is also accompanied by a detailed account (in French) of the location depicted in the selected picture. This means that the Vergue map not only allows you a glimpse into the Paris of the Nineteenth Century it also provides you with a neat history of how locations around the city have changed in the last 150 odd years.

If you are a fan of vintage photographs and the unrivaled view that they provide of our cities' histories then you might also like Picturing the Past - a round-up of 18 other vintage photo maps.

Picturing the Past

The past is another country. You need a different kind of map to navigate there. A map like Cronobook.

Cronobook is an interactive map which can give you a little glimpse into how the world used to be. It allows you to explore vintage photographs of locations around the world. You can explore these photographs by location on the map and also by date using the Cronobook timeline. To search the map by date just click on the clock icon in the top right-hand corner of the map and select the period you wish to explore.

You can also search Cronobook's collection of vintage photographs by subject matter. If you select the album icon above the map you can search the photographs by key words. When you click on an individual photograph on the map you can view the date it was taken and a description provided by the user who uploaded it. You can also comment on individual photographs on Cronobook and join in any discussions about the selected picture or of the historical scene depicted.



Cronobook reminds me a little of the much loved Historypin interactive map. Historypin is another map which showcases vintage and historical photographs of locations around the world taken during different periods of modern history. Historypin has the added advantage of allowing you to view these vintage photographs superimposed on top of the modern Google Map's Street Views of the same scene.

Historypin has a huge collection of photographs that have been uploaded to the site, This allows you to explore the history of locations right around the world. As well as this huge collection of still photography Historypin has a slightly smaller number of vintage film clips that keen users have also uploaded to the site.



If you live in New York then you can also explore vintage photographs of your city on the excellent 1940's NYC and 80s.NYC. In the 1940's, and again in the 1950's, the New York Works Progress Administration took photographs of every building in the city, in order to help estimate property values and property taxes. These two interactive maps allow you to browse these huge collections of New York street scenes by location.

You can explore even more vintage photography on these interactive maps:

The Collections of the Albert Khan Museum - photos captured by Albert Khan's team of photographers at the beginning of the 20th century
OldSF - vintage photos of San Francisco (has Google Maps licencing issues but photos still work)
OldNYC - old photographs of New York
Old Toronto - historic photos of Toronto from the City of Toronto Archives
Wymer's DC - view images of D.C. from the John P. Wymer Photograph Collection
The Yangon Time Machine - a map of vintage photographs of Yangon, Myanmar
Smapshot - historical images of Switzerland
OldAms - thousands of vintage photographs of Amsterdam
Tids Maskinen - explore photos of Norway by location & date
Helsinki Ennen - historical maps and photographs of the Finnish capital
Our Town Stories - Edinburgh - vintage photos & maps of the Scottish capital
Vintage Greece - geo-located vintage photographs and historical maps of Greece
Ajapaik - explore vintage photos of Estonia
The Hungaricana a map of thousands of vintage photographs from the Hungarian Parliament Library