[magduf]

I take tons of photos when I go on vacation in a foreign country, but I don't put them on Facebook. I do put them on Google Photos so interested people (who I specifically invite) can look at them if they choose. (GP also has some convenient features, like being able to add descriptions/commentary to each photo, and being able to see on a map where it was taken.)

Getting a photo book wouldn't help me though. I like to take photos of many things that tourist photos don't show: random city streets, bicycles, vending machines, cars, graffiti, other tourists, locals, shopping districts, residential districts, trains, signs, Apple stores, grocery stores, etc. I like to try to capture what life is really like in a place, good and bad, and a book of tourist photos isn't going to show you that.

[tomxor]

> I like to take photos of many things that tourist photos don't show: random city streets, bicycles, vending machines, cars, graffiti, other tourists, locals, shopping districts, residential districts, trains, signs, Apple stores, grocery stores, etc. I like to try to capture what life is really like in a place, good and bad, and a book of tourist photos isn't going to show you that.

That's great, it's good to take photos like that as a tourist and I wouldn't judge anyone taking photos of any kind in that whole category. But to be clear, i'm talking about something quite different, they are not photos, they are just an extension of social network selfies, "proof I was here", it's about excessive concern with self-image and nothing else - when taken to the extreme in the ways I so commonly see now, it has absolutely no relation to how one takes a genuine photo to capture happy moments, personally unique interests etc when visiting or exploring. These other people have become the extremities of a robot feeding an algorithm.