In describing your city to a friend on a distant continent, you send stunning photos of a favorite park, a museum, a historic site, the sports stadium, and the skyscraper area. She warmly thanks you for glimpses of these spots, but wonders if you could explain what your metro area is really like. Surprised but intrigued, you quickly get your camera and make a list of places to photograph. Where do we live, work, and shop?

For residential areas, maybe single-family house plots, low-rise apartments/condominiums, high rises, courtyard/patio housing, and even informal squatter settlement are to be photographed. For commercial areas, take photos of the city-center business district, an office center, town center, strip/ribbon development, shopping mall, warehouse trucking center, and certainly neighborhood streets with small shops. For industrial areas, photos of both active manufacturing sites and post-industrial brownfields are important.