This picture, from r/earthporn, got me wondering. It seems to me there are many possibilities -- natural places like Niagara Falls, manmade structures like the Golden Gate Bridge or the Eiffel Tower -- but nothing immediately jumps out at me as the obvious answer.
Thoughts?
So. Some researchers at Cornell actually answered this, well sort of. They took 35 million photographs from Flickr and then analyzed the geo data as well as tags to see where people were taking pictures. They also made some awesome maps like this world heat map In the end the top locations according to their research(PDF) were: 1. Eiffel Tower
2. Trafalgar Square
3. Tate Modern
4. Big Ben
5. Notre Dame
6. London Eye
7. Empire State Building Which is in my opinion an oddly London-centric list.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, Flickr has a western bias. And where are the natural landmarks? My hometown chimes in at 23rd on their list, somehow. Emo's, which is apparently the second-most photographed location in Austin after the capital, is a dive music venue in the midst of Austin's "strip" that doesn't even technically exist anymore. Amazing place, but seemingly out of place on that list.
The third "location" for Austin is SXSW, which also probably explain's Emo's. I imagine flickr explodes with photos from SXSW. And yes this all backs up the argument that flickr is a flawed data source, but I think the study is still interesting.
And, this reminded me of another project on flickr where a user is using geotagging to show where locals take pictures compared to where tourists take pictures (he makes this distinction based on how long a user uploads photos from a given city). One of my rather biased favorite examples: Washington, DC
I think you're on the right lines here. Cornell did a project on this, the results were pretty much what you'd expect. Although there are a few I haven't heard of: Fenway Park and Balboa Park being the most highly ranked two. I am British, mind. Perhaps they're more famous among Americans.
It's probably something really silly that everyone visits once in their life. Something like a line of NYC Taxis. I know that was the first picture I took when I got to NYC (HEY LOOK! IT REALY IS JUST LIKE THE MOVIES!) Everyone that visited me took pictures of cabs, and not accidentally in the background.
As a SFWPorn mod I would say, in no particular order and off the top of my head: New York (particularly Manhattan), Hong Kong (especially from the peak), Iguazu Falls, and that picture you linked, Moab Utah (especially the shot of the gooseneck). But realistically it's probably going to be touristy places like Washington D.C., Paris and Seattle.