New Feature: Circuit Search for Locations

Manuel Becker in Changelog
19.02.2018 · 2 min read

Photo by Manuel Becker

Obviously, the most important part of Locationscout is to find great spots for your photo adventures. This is why we implemented a better way of being able to find these places.

One of the basic ideas of Locationscout is to tag photos with 2 different types of tags: 1. Locations and 2. Themes. This enables other users to find these spots based on these 2 parameters and it's already planned for the future to be able to concatenate them to be even more specific about your search (for example: Find me all places @Germany @Rhine #Castle to find all castles at the Rhine river in Germany).

Unfortunately, not all spots are properly tagged, because often it's not that easy to describe a spots with tags that somebody else would use for his search. That's why we implemented the new Circuit Search within Locations. Based on a default radius, the platform will automatically find tagged spots like before, but will also add spots based on their geo positions to the results. The default radius is based on the type of the location (cities have a default of 10km, rivers don't include any area because they usually don't have a center you could effectively search around), but you can also change it dynamically based on what you are searching for and if you are able to get around by car for example.

The new spots view also combines 2 views into one, by being able to see all the photos that were uploaded to the spots for this location or by just filtering them to see "only the best photo / spot", which will hide multiple images from the same spot. Additionally you can order the results now by the distance to the center of the location, which is directly shown on the image itself.

By including the surrounding area of 10km to the location, you already get around 33% more spots for Berchtesgaden. The location will now find any tagged spot or anything that's within the given radius. In this way, the feature will never decrease the amount of shown results and make sure that you won't miss any nice places.

The next Feature

As you already know, feedback is very important for us and something we appreciate a lot. That's why I want to talk a little bit about the next steps we are already working on. This Circuit Search will probably be added to every spot soon, so that you can even search for more spots around the spot you initially wanted to visit and plan your trip around them.

Another different idea we are currently working on is about editing spots. We thought that it would be nice, if everybody would be able to edit spots like a Wikipedia article, because there are quite a lot right now that would definitely benefit from more details. Nevertheless we will try to make sure to show the contribution everybody made to create and improve a spot. Adding a photo to an empty spot right now is often frustrating for some of you, so we would love to improve these spots together with you in the future, so that everybody benefits from more details and knowledge about these places.

What's your opinion about the new feature and the ones we planned? We would love to hear from you in the comments below!

Comments (26)

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Adelheid Smitt verified

10.03.2018

Hi Manuel, I think both ideas are great. The circuit search will really be helpful. I also appreciate the quality over quantity aspect. This should not be a site where people drop photos so their friends can see their holiday snaps. And you are very right, it is frustrating to add a photo to a spot when the original has almost no info. It would be great if we could add that info, or perhaps even correct it. Another frustrating aspect is that sometimes people mark the object they are photographing, and not the spot from where the photo was taken, which is the essential element of Locationscout of course. I add some of my thoughts regarding the uploads. 1. When uploading a photo, all boxes should be filled in before the upload is possible. 2. When uploading to a certain spot, not more than 3 photos at the same time. This will make it a little bit more cumbersome for people to add 10 or so almost identical photos to a spot. That might help reduce the clutter. 3. Is there a way to stress that this is really about LOCATION? A pretty sunset or a bird in the air really has nothing to do with location. 4. When uploading a photo one is asked to name the spot and then give information about where it is taken. I sometimes find that difficult. The place where it was taken should be obvious from the map. I think the title of the spot should reflect the location. As an example; I added some photos to a spot called Ålesund toy City. I didn’t want to create a new spot, as my photos were obviuosly from the same location, but I don’t relate to the term “Toy City”. So what I am suggesting is that you roll the 2 boxes into one, and let people give a title that reflects the location. In this case “Ålesund city view”, or “Ålesund view from Mount Aksla” would be better. 5. I recently uploaded a photo taken in Malaysia. I also added the ‘behind the scenes’ shot, however, something went wrong there but I was not able to delete and retry. So now I have a photo double and a photo on it’s side. Is there a way to make editing of those uploads possible? Keep up the good work. This is a great site, and I have already benefited quite a few times from Locationscout by finding the best place to get a certain photo. So thanks for all the work and effort you put in. It is greatly appreciated. Greetings Adelheid

Team

Manuel Becker 10.03.2018

Dear Adelheid, fully agree to all of your thoughts and we are already working on a solution to fix the spot titles in the future. I think it's also a good idea to limit the images per spot, because this could lead to less photos, but focus on the best ones. I am not sure though what happens if you went to a spot again and got that mega photo, but uploaded 3 already... I wouldn't want to delete one of the others, so I definitely would like to rethink about that in some way. Maybe max 2-3 per week per spot or something like that. The 'Behind the Scenes' feature definitely needs an update after the edit feature, because currently it's not possible to delete these images. I am aware of that, but its planned for sure. Btw: If you send me the spot you are talking about I can immediately fix that.

Adelheid Smitt verified

12.03.2018

Dear Manuel, I think making a limit of no more than 2-3 photos per spot in one week, sounds excellent! Great way to limit the overkill! The behind the scenes photo that went wrong is on my spot "Floating Mosque". It would be great if you could fix it because this looks so awful now. Thanks!

Adelheid Smitt verified

12.03.2018

By the way, I have another question. Some people get their website noted alongside their name with each photo they post. I wonder how I could do that. I would like to add my Facebook photography page like that.

Team

Manuel Becker 12.03.2018

I will have a look at that. Currently, only the website is shown here, but I guess it would make sense to link to the social profiles here if none is set. I will think about that because anybody prefers something else here. Another setting for "preferred link" or so should fix this issue...

Zohaib Khan 08.03.2018

You are doing a fantastic job with location scout. It is my goto tool for researching spots I want to photograph before I take a trip. This new feature sounds great. I'd love to try it out. Few things I wanted to share: 1. Perhaps a bug. Some pictures do no resize properly to fit in the width of the browser when I open them. They spill over beyond the width and I have to way to see them in entirety. My only recourse it to go full screen on a 4K resolution. This solves the issue sometimes, but it would be great if the pictures resize themselves to fit within the bounds of browser width. 2. A better way to list photos based on search query. For example, when I search at Marriott.com for hotels in a specific city, it lists the hotels in a list with a map on the left (It is in the Map View of search). The results are numbered from 1 to whatever and those numbers are referenced on the map. I'm not sure if this is too aggressive to implement. But this way of searching allows me to hone in on hotels based on map locations very easily. Same thing can be applied here that can make search quite friendly. I love the current map view btw. 3. I shared in another comment the idea of curated places and have ambassadors / curators responsible for managing various regions. This way we can have a community based decentralized curation and remove the bottleneck from a few people (if there is one already). Keep up the good work!

Team

Manuel Becker 09.03.2018

Hey again, could you send me a screenshot to [email protected] so that I can have a look at the issue you are talking about? The map is definitely something that needs to be improved and I am pretty sure that it might look like you describe it already. Airbnb is using a similar approach to Marriott I guess and I think it's a pretty good one. Thanks again dear Zohaib, really appreciate your honest and open-minded feedback!! Manuel

Ai Lin Szwoch 03.03.2018

Great idea, Manuel! Anything to make it easier to share locations. Although I agree that this is not a social media platform but one for serious photographers and we need to emphasize quality over quantity. Thanks for all that you do.

Team

Manuel Becker 03.03.2018

Hey Ai Lin, thanks for your opinion. The social part is pretty important for me, but Locationscout definitely shouldn't be the next Instagram which is only about increasing the number of followers. The social platforms we have are great, but this one is definitely more about quality, fully agree. Nevertheless we will also work on more social features in the future, as soon as we made sure that the quality of the existing spots is great and increasing, so that everybody can benefit from these great places and the information about them.

Kevin Harding 27.02.2018

Hi Manuel, one thing I would add with regard to Wiki like editing is that the added comments should be additions, not actual edits to the original. Quite simply because the edit could be inaccurate or confusing. Best to have additional information to digest or research. Cheers ! Kevin

Team

Manuel Becker 27.02.2018

Hey Kevin, thank you very much for your feedback. What would you do with all the empty spots? There are pretty often comments beyond spots that I used to edit the spot and optimize the content, so that you don't have to read all the comments. Currently it's planned to save an edit as a suggestion and that we will have a look at it and approve the edit. In this way we could see how it works, because currently it's unfortunately extremely rare that somebody adds important information as a comment. I fully agree though, that could be a nice way too. It didn't work so good until now, so we would love to try if an edit button right beside the content would make it easier to provide something. If it works well, I think it could be great that experienced users of the platform could edit the spots directly for example. The same could be used for other languages in the future, so that spots could be translated bit by bit into other languages and if they are not available, the English spot description is shown. What do you think about that approach? Thank you again and cheers, Manuel

Zohaib Khan 08.03.2018

Manuel if you are trying to put together a curated approach to this platform, like you described in your comments above, then I would suggest to consider an approach taken by Trip Adviser. They slice by various regions, cities etc and each region / city / area has one or more curators that are responsible to running the forums, answering questions and perhaps arrange / rearrange content etc. Location Scout is a great platform and it has become my goto tool to do research before I embark on any trips. If we have local ambassadors / curators responsible for various geos then it could be done as a distributed team, rather than you alone.

Team

Manuel Becker 09.03.2018

Hey Zohaib, thanks for your suggestions. Couldn't agree more and we will definitely think about that, because it makes so much sense combined with the edit-feature! Awesome to hear that it's your goto tool... makes me personally so happy that the platform can offer so much value to others and I will do my best to improve it bit by bit ;-)

Stefano Mitta 26.02.2018

Great upgrade, many thanks for that! As Mario Carvajalino, I personally find quite long and complicated to add a new spot, especially cause you must add manually any kind of keywords or descriptions. It would be nice if the system would be able to recognize metadata’s photos. Best regards

Team

Manuel Becker 26.02.2018

Hey Stefano, thank you for your feedback! Which metadata could we use additionally? If the image contains geo details, the marker is set on the map automatically as soon as the image is uploaded. Besides that, it's quite hard to use any other metadata, because you would probably not tag the images locally the same way you would do it on Locationscout, would you? What is already planned though is a feature to suggest Locations that are nearby or that nearby spots have, so that you would only have to click them in the uploader. I am open to any other ideas to make the upload easier. Thank you very much!

Stefano Mitta 26.02.2018 , edited

Thank you for keep improving this site, I cannot even imagine how much time you spend working on it! You’re great! This morning I was in a hurry... what I was trying to say is that I personally find too long add a spot, because I must write down (or copy and paste) key words, descriptions etc. that are already included into the files. Maybe I’m wrong, but in my mind should be something like this: when you upload a photo “abracadabra” and you’ll see all the informations in the right space. 30 sec, done, save the spot. This could even support multi upload add spots (of course again in my mind ;) Then there will always be the possibility to do all the “add process” entirely manually or just add some missing data. The suggestion feature is such a great idea to implement nearby spots visibility and vice versa. That will add some suggestion keywords as well? Maybe in another color (easily to get rid of it if don’t need it)? Many thanks for everything, Best regards and good evening

Stefano Mitta 26.02.2018

Sorry I forgot another thing: if I want to watch one by one your extraordinary portfolio it takes too long cause I have to get into a spot, then get back, then open another one, than back again... it wouldn’t be easier to navigate through spots with a couple of arrows on the sides of the page? And what about a full screen mode to see the photos at their best? Sorry... this was the last one! Again a massive thanks to listen all of this things. All the best

Team

Manuel Becker 26.02.2018

Hey Stefano, you really don't have to be sorry. I am extremly thankful for such a detailed feedback! I will definitely think about the spot uploader and if there are ways to make it faster. In general Locationscout probably can't be compared with Social Media platforms though, because there everything is about sharing something extremely easy and fast. So I would even rate quality over quantity, because spots with a bad or none description at all are not helpful for most of the photographers, because it's about these details that should help you to plan a trip and it's hard for me to imagine, that everybody who uses Lightroom would add some great details here that can be used for the spots. It may work for you, but others would have to delete "Family Vacation 2018 at Palma" as a tag that was set automatically. Or am I understanding you wrong here? I guess I should definitely make a video or an easy explanation in the future, because in general it's extremely easy to set some good tags within just a few seconds. The part about the portfolio is very true though and I instantly understand what you mean. I will have to think about that... a couple of arrows won't work, because what happens when I added 2 photos to one spot? Then I would need to see the next photo in the spot and after the second one, I would need to recognize this and show the next spot and you as a user would have to understand when one or the other is happening. But I could think of a faster preview, that wouldn't close the page but only show the image and use something here that can be used to easily see the photos. That would probably solve the issue, wouldn't it? Thank you very much again for your great feedback, really appreciate it! All the best to you too and thank you for being a part of the community Stefano!

Stefano Mitta 05.03.2018

Ciao Manuel! By the way, now I got your point about tag. And you're right even about the arrows, cause of course a lot of people could be confused. I was thinking about this: everything same (because it's perfect), the only difference is when you are visiting someone's portfolio! You get through its photos instead of navigate through spots. I agree, a faster preview should already solve a lot. Anyway... everything you are doing to make Locationscaut better, will be great and super appreciated ;) And guys I totally agree with you... we need to emphasize quality over quantity. Best regards

Team

Manuel Becker 05.03.2018

Great that we are the same opinion here. I will definitely think about a special view of the portfolio and maybe even for the spots... I would also enjoy seeing the photos in a higher resolution without always having to visit the spot itself, especially when I just want to see the photo. Thanks again for your feedback dear Stefano!!

Bob Jackson 25.02.2018

Hi Manuel, Editing spots by way of adding additional information is a great idea and I like the additional spots too. Great work keep it up, thank you Bob

Team

Manuel Becker 25.02.2018

Hey Bob, really appreciate your feedback and I am glad that you like the direction we are trying to go with the platform, to hopefully make it even better in the future for everyone. Have a great day and cheers from Cologne!

Mario 20.02.2018

Manuel: I travel quite often after good photography spots. I do not find easy to upload photos and details that might be of interest to other photographers. Could you provide an easy to follow steps to do it. Thanks.

Team

Manuel Becker 20.02.2018

Hey Mario, thanks for your feedback. Could you explain that a little bit more in detail? Isn't our uploader easy enough to use or are you unsure about places that are worth it to get uploaded?

AurèLphotog 20.02.2018

It's a great thing ! Your work is really intersting and your ideas are really cool !

Team

Manuel Becker 20.02.2018

Thanks buddy, really appreciate it! :)

New Feature: Circuit Search for Locations

The next Feature

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