Earlier this week, I attended a Panasonic Lumix event in London, and one of the subjects covered was two new photography based web sites Panasonic have produced, Our Place and My-Place, both of which have a strong emphasis on heritage and culture.

For Our Place, Panasonic worked with UNESCO and 14 professional photographers to photograph 850 UNESCO World Heritage Sites (with Panasonic cameras of course!)

The aim is to document the sites and the people that live and work around them to give a real picture of the culture that surrounds them.

Now I love the idea behind this but to be frank, the site sucks. I can say that as someone who has a fair amount of experience in building photography based web sites. The main problem is that the photos on the site are tiny and all emblazoned with huge watermarks that completely obliterate a large chunk of the photo.

Some of the photography is obviously stunning, but unfortunately, you just don’t get to appreciate it. Coupled with the fact that there’s very little explanation behind the photos (just basic EXIF info) or their locations, means that what could be a stunning showcase for world heritage is actually a dull and ultimately frustrating experience.

I understand that there are (or will be) books featuring these photos. Now, I’m fairly certain these books won’t feature tiny photos with huge watermarks. So why they insist on doing that on the web site is beyond me.

I hope the team behind Our Place make some changes to the site, because it does have a lot of potential. I think they’re going to need to bite the bullet and provide full resolution, unwatermarked images with a short description by the photographer to really bring it to life though.

The other site, My-Place, has a similar theme, but rather than showing World Heritage Sites, it lets users upload their own photographs of their own favourite places. Panasonic describe it as a “personal version” of Our Place. Unfortunately, it’s UK-only (at least for now), but it does have some nice features such as easy to use maps with push-pins for showing the location of your photo.

My-Place has a focus on heritage and culture, so it’s not like a Flickr (or even Fotonomy), where you can upload photos of pretty much anything. I’m assuming that both photos and comments will be quite heavily moderated too.

They’ve also hired professional photographers to give tips and advice, and also to rate users’ photos, so they can offer prizes for the best. There’s a ‘Photo of the Week’ where the winner receives a £75 voucher and a ‘Photo of the Year’ where the winning photographer wins a tour of China.

Personally, I found the navigation on My-Place a little frustrating to use and it’s difficult to find anything much if you’re not registered on the site. But I do think this one has potential… just as long as you happen to be in the UK!

Check the sites out and let me know what you think. Am I being overly critical of Our Place? Would you use My-Place? Post your comments here.