Travel photos: Motivations, image dimensions, and affective qualities of places

Travel photos can be symbols reflecting inner feelings of the photographers. They also serve as records that store travel experience of the photographers. By content analyzing 145 travel photos submitted to The New York Times, this paper aims to explore the relationships among motivations, image dimensions, and affective qualities of places. Findings indicate image dimension of natural resources such as “wealth of countryside”, “flora and fauna” and “beaches” are frequently associated with “arousing” and “pleasant” feelings toward a destination. On the other hand, image dimension of culture, history and art is frequently associated with “pleasant” quality of a place. These three association rules are in turn frequently linked to “intellectual” travel motivation. Photos that induce “arousing” and “pleasant” feelings are often taken in long shot, at eye-level angle, with stark density level and with single-person composition.