The National Parks attract 300+ million visitors per year. While we know what parks they go to, visitor locations inside the parks are tougher to know. One way to see that is through photography and social media.
The landscapes naturally lend themselves to photography, much of which ends up on Instagram. By examining the metadata of Instagram posts, we can find the locations where photos were taken. This information can be used to make interactive maps of the parks, showing visitor locations and the photos they took at these locations.
Not meant as a method to track visitors, this project wants to examine how people visit the parks. You can see the ways in which many different people choose to photograph the common attractions. But you can also see who has made it to the more remote areas. Watch as the map markers wander along trails, breaking off to follow rivers and valleys. See the photos they take along the way, exploring all reaches of the parks.
Hundreds of thousands of Instagram posts were gathered, then parsed and prepared for display. The site was built on Node, React & Bootstrap, with data display taking place in Leaflet and D3.