As the filename implies Shirakawa Go which is in Japan where I live.
Shirakawa Go means White River Village. In recent years it has
become a seasonal tourist attraction. Someone took a photo of
the village under a blanket of snow back about 50 or 60 years ago
when hobby photography was in it's first consumer boom. I can no
longer recall what the famous ("original") shots looked like but probably
something like this:
As thousands and then hundreds of thousands of tourists started
pouring in UNESCO got in the game (mid 80's or so) and now every
year the residents are chased out for a few months during winter as
perhaps tens of millions of people bus and drive there just to duplicate
that one shot or see it in person. I was there on a low trafficked day
according to the bus driver. I'm usually pretty good as estimating crowd
sizes and I would say between 50 to 75 thousand people came and
went while I was there from noon-ish till about 9 or 10pm. I believe it
was UNESCO who had the bright idea of lighting the place at night
from 7 to 9:30 pm (IIRC) by placing multiple large flood lights around
each home to shine on the snow covered thatch roofs - which is when
tourist visitations increased from thousands to millions. These days
the iconic photo of Shirakawa Go looks something like this:
Or just to see how many are now duplicating this experience in photography sample this search page:
I spent most of my pixels recording the tourist interaction with the
site rather than trying to duplicate someone else's vision or fight
the crowds to get shot X.
Bifurcator wrote:
As the filename implies Shirakawa Go which is in Japan where I live.
Shirakawa Go means White River Village. In recent years it has
become a seasonal tourist attraction. Someone took a photo of
the village under a blanket of snow back about 50 or 60 years ago
when hobby photography was in it's first consumer boom.
As thousands and then hundreds of thousands of tourists started
pouring in UNESCO got in the game (mid 80's or so) and now every
year the residents are chased out for a few months during winter as
perhaps tens of millions of people bus and drive there just to duplicate
that one shot or see it in person. I was there on a low trafficked day
according to the bus driver. I'm usually pretty good as estimating crowd
sizes and I would say between 50 to 75 thousand people came and
went while I was there from noon-ish till about 9 or 10pm. I believe it
was UNESCO who had the bright idea of lighting the place at night
from 7 to 9:30 pm (IIRC) by placing multiple large flood lights around
each home to shine on the snow covered thatch roofs - which is when
tourist visitations increased from thousands to millions.
Or just to see how many are now duplicating this experience in photography sample this search page:
I spent most of my pixels recording the tourist interaction with the
site rather than trying to duplicate someone else's vision or fight
the crowds to get shot X....Show more →
Interesting. It makes me think of something I read yesterday about mountain climbing -- since the advent of GoPro cameras and people posting their videos on the internet, some spots have become so popular that nature becomes spoiled (people leaving their (literal) crap everywhere) there, and also inexperienced climbers meeting their death at risky but beautiful climbs, causing those places to be closed down also for experienced climbers.
