We’re always looking for new ways to help people get the most out of their PC experience. With Windows Live Photo Gallery, a big part of what makes an excellent experience in the app is having a set of exceptional photos. Great photos, which you have taken, can then be made better and be shared with your friends and family. To help people get on their way to becoming prolific photographers, with an eye for a great shot, today we’re launching a Windows Live Photo Gallery experience on foursquare that helps users discover some of the best photo spots in their city, starting off with San Francisco, Seattle and New York.
Once you follow Windows Live Photo Gallery on foursquare, we will start to provide you with tips, from expert photographers, on where to take great photos in your city and how to go about taking them. For example, when you check-in around San Francisco’s Fort Mason Municipal Pier, our tip would alert you to the presence of one of our photo spots:
“Walk out to the end of the pier and look back at the city. There is a great Panoramic Stitch opportunity in which you can capture Coit Tower, The Transamerica Building, and Ghirardelli Square.”
You can either go to our page on foursquare to plan your photo hunt for the day or just discover the spots through pop-up tips as you check-in on your phone.
To bring you the best photos, I toured the country and got to spend time with some amazingly gifted photographers to pick a wide variety of spots in each city, from tourist hot spots to some really great hidden gems. We teamed up with great, local photography experts who really know their way around these cities and their best spots.
Lorenzo Dominguez is a street photographer in New York City who also writes on the subject of photography for Examiner.com and has a bestselling photo essay, titled “25 Lessons I’ve Learned about Photography…Life.” (Flickr)
Patrick Smith is a landscape and city photographer in San Francisco, as well as a Flickr phenomenon. He travels up and down the California coast, looking for natural beauty. (Flickr)
Jason Hoover uses creative image capturing, lighting, and post processing in his photography to give it a very unique feel. He currently shoots in Seattle and throughout the world in his travels. (Flickr)
It was a ton of fun scouting out these spectacular spots with each of these talented photographers for a day and hearing about their passion for photography and for their city. Without them, we definitely wouldn’t have been able to get the same level of quality that you see in our tips.
We are also really excited to have worked with foursquare on delivering this experience. Many of us on the team here are hardcore foursquare users (I even have the elusive Super Swarm badge!) and their location-based platform is a natural fit for helping users to discover these great photo spots while they’re out exploring their city.
So, get out there and start taking some amazing photos! I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite shots from each city, taken with a Nikon D5000.
