Alan Machin: Tourism As Education - Topics

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Aids To Drawing: The Camera Obscura

Travellers anxious to draw accurate sketches of the places they saw might take with them a 'camera obscura'. The phrase means 'dark chamber' or 'room' and of course the word for chamber would later be used for the photographic device we know. The ancient Chinese and Greeks both knew of the principles: if a dark room can be constructed with a tiny hole in an outside wall, then in daylight an inverted image of the outside view will be projected through the hole onto the wall opposite. The interior wall is best painted white. If the wall were to be replaced by a translucent screen then the image can be viewed from its other side. So the early experimenters found they could make a wooden box with a pinhole at one end and a screen at the other, and see from the outside an inverted image on the screen. If a mirror could be angled inside then the image could be shown right way up through a translucent screen placed in the top of the box. An artist could place thin paper over it and trace the image, using the result as the basis for a better-drawn sketch or painting. The next step, to a device which could record and preserve the image accurately by photo-chemical means was only a short distance away.

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Read the rest of 'Tourist Photography' to date on the page of that title by scrolling down the left-hand list.

There are also new 2010 postings on Tourist Photography - click here

Victoria and Jay Stevens, in Kentucky, USA, have taken the first steps in creating their own tourist attraction and how it began and is developing is giving an example of just how different things can be. Their project is not in a less-economically developed country but an advanced one which is a mixture of conservative attitudes to change and a vigorous acceptance of the entrepreneurial spirit. It is called Old Rice Farm and it occupies around 250 acres of land set in a valley close to the Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian Mountains. Victoria and Jay have taken the first step towards 'developing' their property by having a local woodworker build them a cabin. It will provide them with a weekend base away from their full-time jobs in Cincinnati - Vicky in market research and Jay in jet engine maintenance. With a new baby less than a year old and busy lives back home they see it as a long term activity. Ideas are still churning around in their minds. Cabins for people to own or rent are in amongst the basic plans with hopes for small craft workshops and music events some of the prefered options. But already the nature of the 'holler' - the regional name for this kind of closed-ended side valley - and its neighbouring people has produced a fascinating glimpse of a very different way of life. Tourism planning here is at the grass roots - the blue grass roots just about as it's close to the famous horse country of Kentucky - and not up in the dark canopy of big business.

The first postings telling their story appear on the "Old Rice Farm" page - see the list to the left.

Plimoth Plantation celebrates and examines the Mayflower Pilgrims' 1620s settlement on the coast of what is now Massachusetts. A new page (see list to the left) is being developed describing the iconic New England tourist attraction.

All research begins with some kind of question. Someone wants to find out what, why, when, how or who? – in connection with a topic. Some examples were given in the previous posting. They weren’t the kind that would form the basis of a dissertation, but they could be close. Start with your interests because you need to do a research project that you are interested in – you have to work on it continuously for several months! And here’s another tip – think of two or three because the first you think of may not work and there are important practical considerations to keep in mind – more about them later.

If you asked me for my interests I might say the geography of tourism, tourism planning or visitor interpretation. Those are the key subjects that I teach. How would I turn the geography of tourism into a research topic, though? One interesting and important question that everyone working in tourism management needs to know is: what are the changing world patterns in tourism? That leads to thinking about what the new destinations are, such as China and India, as well as the new tourism-generating countries that will supply tomorrow’s visitors, such as China (again) and the countries of eastern Europe. But this is a huge subject and could take you much more than 22 weeks to do – and in any case, you can get a pretty good idea just by looking at a specialist travel atlas.

So here are two key things to consider – can you carry out the research in the time you have got and have you chosen a topic that can be answered just by reading the right book? If the answers to those questions are respectively no and yes then you won’t get a successful dissertation completed......

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE on the page "Doing A Dissertation" in the list to the left.

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