republic of the congo

Armchair travel

Dhow and Minaret iii

It’s raining here in London and it’s making me feel a little bit down. In an attempt to make my world seem a little less bleary, I thought I’d go looking for travel photos. Whether or not this has actually cheered me up, or just made me want to fling a random selection of clothes in a bag and grab my passport, I’ve not quite decided. But here are some of the best travel photography sites that I wandered onto on my world trip, conducted from the comfort of the Small Aperture mansion.

My favourite has to be Photoburst. It’s a daily travel photo competition. One photo from however many daily submissions is selected and exhibited. You can check back at retrospective winners and explore the globe, but when you land on the home page you’re confronted with one, large, beautiful image.

Travelblog shows 30 thirty different photos every ten minutes. Some of them might not be that terrific, but the variety means that you’ll probably stumble over something that really appeals or inspires. And if you don’t, check back in ten minutes’ time!

I spent far too long just clicking through the gallery at Travellerspoint. The initial interface doesn’t do much to showcase pictures, but once you’re into the gallery-proper, you’ll be absorbed as you fly from Ireland to Bolivia to Nepal, via the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Of course, National Geographic has an awesome collection of pictures. You can browse by country or by theme, or there’s the photograph of the day.

And finally there’s TrekEarth. There’s so much to choose from that just for browsing you might be overwhelmed—TrekEarth is a travel photo community that aims to improve photographers’ work through constructive criticism—but do go and look at the travelogues, where members submit a series of pictures to tell the story of a trip.

It’s still raining here. Ah well. Do you have any particular favourites to share?