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Flickr Photos Reveal Harvard's True Colors

Nov 6, 2009 04:00 PM

Cartograms are usually pretty mundane, but throw in Flickr, Photoshop, and a well-known public place and you have an artistic representation of popular colors. Much more eye-grabbing than your common map.

The colors represent what people on the ground are looking at in the specific physical-cultural landscape. Based off the most recent 2,000 Flickr geotagged photos, Cartogrammar found the average color in each photo, plotted it on the map, and interpolated them into a vivid diagrammatic rendering of our most favorite colors in that area.

Heat map of Harvard University and surrounding areas.

The following photos show the process of color coding Boston Common:

Heat map of Boston, highlighting areas such as Boston Common and Public Garden.

Determining the average color:

Crowd of people walking in a park, with color swatches indicating most common and average colors in the scene.

Plotting the colors where the photo was taken:

Map indicating various points of interest in a park area.

Interpolating (blurring) the colors via Photoshop:

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