Discovering the World’s Best Photo Spots with the PhotoHound Community
2020 has certainly been a year like no other and one that we are all ready to say goodbye to. As we reflect on a landmark year for photographers and the travel industry (for all the wrong reasons), we’d like to take a moment to celebrate some of the positive initiatives that have been happening at PhotoHound, thanks to our proactive and creative community, and to look forward to discovering the world’s best photo spots together in 2021.
We collectively shared 2000+ new photo spots
During this year where we were forced by COVID-19 to stay home, many photographers used the time to reflect on past travels and find pleasure in re-editing and cataloguing photos from past trips. Travel photographer, Vojta Herout, generously shared a further 95 of his favourite photo spots with the PhotoHound community bringing his total to 203 locations with over 500 images to inspire future trips for fellow PhotoHounders. Likewise, avid travellers Wayne and Lyn Liebelt reviewed some of their favourite trips and shared travel and photography tips from 10 different countries they’d visited in more usual years.
Thanks to PhotoHounders everywhere, we’ve added a further 2000 new photo spots to the map this year with stunning images, accurate GPS coordinates, creative and technical tips and local information to inspire future photography trips. We have 5600+ incredible photo locations for you to explore with more being shared daily.
We re-discovered local
Another positive of lockdown life was learning to appreciate our local areas. Many PhotoHounders used their daily exercise to explore their surroundings in more detail with their cameras. Gert Lucas, shared his love of Belgium, adding over 1000 images, many of which were taken on his doorstep. Gert is curator of a wonderful guide to photographing Brussels. Now he continues to share the best photo spots in and around Belgium.
PhotoHounder, Saša Jamšek, has visited and photographed in excess of 50 different countries. He has shared over 80 locations from around the world on the PhotoHound map. Recently he has contributed some beautiful, lesser-known spots and quieter scenes from his home country, Slovenia.
We focused on being responsible photographers
Responsible photography has always been at the heart of what we do. In creating PhotoHound, we wanted to connect with photographers who, like us, wanted to share photo locations the right way. We’ve enjoyed hearing from PhotoHounders who make sure their photography doesn’t impact negatively on the places they visit and shoot.
We were delighted to introduce responsible photography tagging for each spot earlier this year; we are thankful that 2020 gave us the time to commit to this. Thank you to everyone of you who added a spot to the PhotoHound world map. It has been incredible to see photographers taking care to consider whether a location can be shot freely or if it requires more stewardship.
A special thank you goes out from us to Tacoma-based PhotoHounder, Joe Becker. Joe is our top PhotoHounder of 2020 with a whopping 341 photo spots and 1025 images shared. He has also been instrumental in establishing responsible photography guidelines in his curated guides and individual photo spots.
Joe is joined on the 2020 PhotoHound leaderboard by Vojta Herout; Gert Lucas; Saša Jamšek; Richard Lizzimore; James Billings; Raimondo Giamberduca; Hanaa Turkistani; Frederic Monin and Matt Holland. They have all shared inspirational and thoughtfully curated location guides and photo spots for the benefit of our travel community. We encourage you to follow them on PhotoHound and social medial – they are definitely PhotoHounders to watch.
New Partnerships
We further integrated good responsible photography practices by joining forces with Nature First. PhotoHound joined the alliance for responsible nature photography as Bronze Partners in recognition of how we share photo locations. We are excited to be working on ways to promote our shared values as we head into the new year.
Farewell 2020
There you have it… 2020; a year like… well you know. But on the upside;
- we welcomed another 250 contributing photographers,
- added 2000 fresh photo spots from 96 different countries around the world,
- curated 12 new photo location guides,
- shared 9500+ travel images with top tips on how best to shoot them.
So let’s bid farewell to 2020 and look ahead to happier, healthier times. Here’s to getting back out with our cameras – there’s a lot to explore!
Happy New Year to you all and best wishes from Luka, Jules, Mathew and Anton of PhotoHound
