“Seventy-five years ago, tourism was about experience seeking. Now it’s about using photography and social media to build a personal brand. In a sense, for a lot of people, the photos you take on a trip become more important than the experience.” – New York Times

The article mentioned above is worth a read for a number of reasons, but primarily the references to “over tourism” prevalent in many parts of the world.  I mentioned in a previous post that I had never seen so many selfie sticks – and tourists photographing themselves instead of the scenery – and this article expands on that in much more detail.

One of my favorite activities when traveling to interesting locations is to photograph people taking photographs.  It’s almost become too easy – like “shooting fish in a barrel” as they say.  But I try to keep it interesting and include some of the surroundings as context.  It is a bit aggravating, but since I can’t easily get the people out of the pictures I figure I might as well go with the flow.

These are just a few of the photos I took of “POPTP” from our recent visit to Italy.