Because of its proximity to London, its university and its relatively compact size, Cambridge is a major tourist destination for overseas visitors. A Guardian article from October 2018 put the number of visitors at 8.1 million a massive number compared to the 125,000 residents. This huge influx of visitors contributes £835 million to the local economy and accounts for 22% of jobs but over 80% of the visitors are day trippers sometimes staying for as little as 2 or 3 hours.

Given the limited number of images available in this exercise and using the 2 – 3 hours as a guide I set about trying to create a series of images that I thought most tourists would try and capture, a ‘greatest hits’ of the city. I was lucky that on the day I decided to take tourist pictures there was strong sunlight and blue skies, a break from the January grey. In processing the images I wanted to give them a postcard quality and so increased the saturation to give them richer tones. Because of the time of year shots of the river with lots of visitors punting was not possible; although there were some tourists brave enough to go punting in January there were only a few and this is something I will probably revisit in the summer when the river will be much busier. One of the other challenges in trying to replicate postcard images is that many of the them are taken from vantage points within the colleges which I was unable to do as the they were not open to the public.

For the set of images that represent the view of the city as a resident I wanted to concentrate on the everyday, the things that residents experience that are essential, mundane, enjoyable or frustrating.

Cambridge as seen by tourists 

Cambridge as seen by residents

Sources

The Guardian. 2019. Cambridge divided over growing number of tourist groups | UK news | The Guardian. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/13/cambridge-locals-row-numbers-chinese-tourists. [Accessed 02 February 2019].