The average population density of western europe is much higher than the average population density of even the eastern USA.

Coupled with the fact that there is a lot more 'older' stuff there, whether castles, old battlefields, churches, you name it, it's not surprising there are a lot more tourist photos being taken. The average European city is a lot more photogenic than the average American or Asian city (clearly there are exceptions, given NY is #1).

Tourism is not necessarily a function of what is the best thing to do, but what is the best thing to do, given a set budget, timeframe and comfort level. On those scores, tourism in western europe wins.

I just checked Paris, the most photographed is Moulin Rouge, in the middle of the former prostitutes quarter. More photographed than arc de triumph, Eiffel tower, of the 2 km long Champs Élysée.

We have to talk either about tourists motivations or the effect of the difference between the camera position and the target position in density maps relevance.

Eiffel tower photo locations are spread over a fairly wide area, while Moulin Rouge photos are taken in a relatively small spot, hence more intense.

A very good point. The Eiffel tower photos will only show up when people are ironically taking photos from the tower, instead of the tower. It's much too big to get a good photo of with normal point and shoot lenses. There will be related hotspots such as from across the river, but lots of random photos on the streets will be of the tower from different angles.

Whereas the Moulin Rouge is tucked into a street, and that street is the only place you can snap it.

A great innovation in camera tech would be to tag the 'main' object being photographed if it is more than xm away from the camera itself. Using GPS for direction, and using some type of algorithm for detecting the main image, I'm sure you could get a decent approximation of the target as well as the shooters location. That would make for some interesting data and you'd be able to sort on landscape vs portrait photos just by examining the GPS data.

I'm a bit sad that there is no scale for extreme hotspots - I'm sure you'd be able to pinpoint the Mona Lisa's location in the Louvre otherwise.

most of the pictures reflect tourism density, US has less than one fifth of the yearly tourists of europe.

History? I don't know the source so maybe there is a bias of what data is available.

There are much more to see in rural areas in Europe than in US, plain and simple. Plus, perhaps, different density distribution (but first sentence covers that too).

Although weirdly there is a big dark space in France - what's with that?

Isn't a lot of France fairly rural and with a low population density - the distribution of pictures in Europe seems to match population density fairly closely:

http://kids.britannica.com/comptons/art-143547/Population-de...