My Top 10 Instagram Photos of 2017

Instagram is the area of my online presence that takes up most of my time and energy. I’ve written about Instagram before on this blog so that’s probably no surprise. I figured sharing my top 10 Instagram photos of 2017, as chosen by the amount of likes they received, would be a fun way to look back on the past year. That’s so popular to do when a year ends or another one begins. In each case, I’ve endeavored to include stories that I didn’t share when I first posted the photos on my Instagram account.

So here is the countdown of my Top 10 Most Liked Photographs on Instagram in 2017

#10 in my top 10 is:

A portrait of Danté at the Palm Springs Wind Farm near the highway. I’d been dreaming of taking a sunset silhouette photo here for years. The desire was sparked by some movie I saw once that I can’t even remember the name of. And while I’ve driven by the wind farm many times during many different trips to California, I’d never had all the elements come together at once like they did this time. We were at the end of a trip to Palm Springs to attend Coachella and it was so windy we were almost knocked off our feet to take this photo. But take it we did. And a day or so later, I left to spend more than a month on the road for work. Whenever I missed Danté during that month away, I looked back at this image and felt grateful I now have someone to come home to who enjoys photography as much as I do.

#9 in my top 10 is:

An early Fall day in Central Park. It seems the Park is a popular spot for my followers on Instagram if this list is to be believed! More on that later in this list. It’s a place that Danté and I definitely love visiting in the city. We usually are in the park several times a month. The secret behind this photo though is that I actually took it in the Fall of 2016 and only finally shared it in October of 2017 because we hadn’t really had a lot of color arrive yet but I was still craving the kind of scene that says, “early Fall in NYC” so I just dug into my archives to find the right image.

#8 in my top 10 is:

McWay Falls in Big Sur, California shot during a trip with Danté in 2015. Another “latergram!” The “secret” behind this photo is that Big Sur was actually closed around the time I posted this because of a bridge collapse. It’s not something everyone would have known but those “in the know” must have immediately seen this and figured it out. Only the most hearty of climbers and hikers could have made it here during the timeline in which I posted this photo. You had to walk a very long distance to make it to this spot with the road closures as far as I know!

#7 in my top 10 is:

A photo of Dublin. This was taken during the St. Patrick’s Day parade that I attended with Guinness and the funny thing is that I wasn’t at all happy with this photo. Yet I really wanted to post SOME photo of the parade. It was SUCH a fun experience and the high from that day was so high that I wanted to share that. Somehow it must have come through because this photo got more than 5,000 likes!

#6 in my top 10 is:

A moment I had been looking forward to for a long time, my first trip to see the Northern Lights. It ended up happening on a trip to Canada’s Yukon arranged by my friend Hannah at Curio Trips. During the trip we learned that photographing this natural phenomenon is a lot harder than it looks. Despite having done loads of research and watching tons of videos online, in the moment it was all trial and error. I was shooting with Olympus equipment and I ended up having to shoot at a very high ISO to get any photos to turn out. So there’s a lot of noise in the finished photo despite my having edited from a RAW image. Though I love Olympus cameras, this was the trip that convinced me their equipment wasn’t for me long term. All that aside, my followers still loved this photo to the tune of more than 5,700 likes and I think that’s because I am not the only one who is enthralled with Northern Lights.

#5 in my top 10 is:

Another view of Central Park, which dominates this list. This view of winter in the Park was shared early in January. What a cold day it was when I took this!! But it was even colder in my apartment as I shared the photo, since our landlord doesn’t turn on the heat during the day, only at night. I wasn’t actually happy with this photo because of the lack of color. I even considered editing it as a black and white but at the last moment I decided to keep it in color and I shared it hoping it would do all right. Apparently my followers aren’t as picky as I am! Or winter is Central Park is just easy to double click on!

#4 in my top 10 is:

I took this photo inside a shopping center in Dublin. Since I am always drawn to architectural moments, it’s no surprise this moment captured my particular attention. Still I was surprised by how well it did with my followers. The secret here is that it actually took a long time to line up a shot where everything was in fact, in line. And I shared this knowing I hadn’t even gotten it exactly right. The more lines you have in any photo, the harder it is to have them all right. Especially with anything old, as inevitably buildings settle and shift with age and they don’t do it perfectly! All that aside, leading lines are one of my favorite things to capture and I couldn’t resist how many of them there are in this scene.

#3 in my top 10 is:

A moment of respite in a flower shop in Dublin was a surprising one to me, in terms of how well it did. (I think I have said that with almost every photo on this list!) Yet when I was taking the photo, I did think of many of the accounts that are my personal favorites on Instagram. I thought of how many people I follow that are always sharing interiors and I did want to take a photo worthy of some of those accounts. It would seem, I somehow met that goal. This photo garnered more than 6,400 likes. Then again, it was also shared in a March that was brutally cold and not at all a green one. Perhaps many followers saw the green and were just cheered by thoughts of Spring!

#2 in my top 10 is:

A view of the vaulted ceiling in the Trinity College Library in Dublin. In fact the city dominates this list. Ireland proved to be the most popular place I shared on Instagram in 2017 if this list is to be believed. And this spot in particular was one I’d dreamed of photographing for almost as long as I can remember. I saw a photo of this library when I was very young and all I could think of was, “that must be what heaven is like!” I have always been a voracious reader. So libraries are my idea of heaven. Combine that with great architecture and, well, you get the idea…

And drumroll please, my number one most liked photo of 2017 in my top 10 with 7,917 likes as of the date this goes to press for the blog, is:

This second image also captured during Fall in Central Park is one I shared just before I left for a Viking River Cruise with my mum. She was standing beside me as I took this with just my iPhone. I thought I knew that Autumn would be gone from the city by the time I got back. So I wanted to commemorate it with a photo showing all the colors. Hilariously, I wasn’t actually that happy with this photo. I thought it was a bit boring. Most people that stand in this spot in Central Park point their cameras toward the high rises that line 59th Street. There’s so much construction there now, I thought it would be nicer to show this view, to the right, instead. My gamble paid off, I guess!

And this all must be a lesson for 2018: that I should trust my gut more and doubt myself less…

Check out the 2016 version of my top 10 and the 2015 version. What would you like to see me share more of on Instagram? Do you follow me there, if you do, what’s your handle so I can check out your feed?