There’s a trend that sweeps Instagram in December; the Instagram Best Nine. It’s pretty simple, you enter your username, it acts like it’ll take ten minutes due to “high demand,” and then it gives you a 3×3 grid of your top nine posts of the calendar year. There’s also a convenient link to the previous year’s photos so you can see a year over year change.
The photos are sorted by likes, moving from top left to bottom right. I think I agree with the popularity contest. Number one is definitely one of my favorites, and I don’t think there are any photos that I miss. It captured all my photo-centric travel of the year: Downtown Plano, Palo Duro, Downtown Dallas, the solar eclipse, and more Downtown Plano.
Just for kicks and giggles, here’s the 2016 best nine. I’m not sure I like all the photos that got the most likes in 2016. The top photo is from Big Bend, and while it’s a nice photo, it isn’t even my favorite from that trip. I always love star trails, but both beignets photos are mediocre. The photos from Utah are solid. I don’t like the moon reflection picture any more, and neither do I like the final super moon picture. Maybe I’ve just become more of a self critic and am going through the classic photography phase of not liking any of your old work.
In reflection, I seem to have posted significantly less (113 vs 71) but got many more likes. If we’re measuring things by likes and not photographic quality, I got better at the Instagram hashtag game. Here’s to 2018 being even better.
Ben There Shot That 