Dec 242015
 

Most liked pictures on Instagram by desi Traveler

I am a novice and not very active on Instagram, though I joined the same last year, I have not been active in updating my Instagram feed for almost a year after creating the account. But 2015 was a good year to learn a thing or two about Instagram.  Today  Instagram has become one of the most popular social sharing sites for sharing your images and there are more than 300 million active users of Instagram. Although there are some inherent shortcomings in Instagram that I do hope they take care in future. To give you just one example Instagram does not allows you to give a link to your blog post or any other external site. So even the links that you paste for a blog etc. are converted to plain text.  So you do not receive any referral traffic from Instagram, except for a link to your website in the bio .

 In order to overcome this I sometime add a line in the Instagram comments that more about this picture in by blog, link in the bio. 

Though I am yet to see much traction from the same. But Instagram for sure is a fun medium to experiment with and if you are big on Instagram like some of the folks I know of, then you can easily make some money too from Instagram. I was approached for the first time if I accept sponsored posts on my Instagram feed, when I crossed 750 followers so you can imaging folks with thousands of followers must be able to monetize Instagram much better..  One important lesson learned about Instagram is that it works on themes and #tags. People tend to follow and like pictures they are interested in, also though your follower count matters, on analysis I have regularly discovered that most of my pictures are liked by people I don’t know. Also  the maximum likes appear in the first 2 hours of uploading the picture. After that the likes just trickles and though the first flood of likes is from strangers, your followers like the pictures later, may be because they come online and your pictures appear on their wall.

Since I barely have around 800 followers on Instagram, I am nobody to give you any gyan about “ How To Succeed On Instagram”, I have just shared my observations, they could be totally wrong on relevant only to me. So you are welcome to totally disregard them.  There is nothing special about these images except that they were most liked by people who follow desi Traveler, and that is what makes them VERY SPECIAL for me.

  But let us go ahead and look at the Top 10 pictures liked on Instagram by desi Traveler 

This first picture is from Chandratal in Himachal, you can reach Chandra Tal by a really bad road from Kunzum La or you can hike slowly again from Kunzum La. Once you reach Chandratal you can camp in the designated area or stay in one of the tents provided by some camping companies.

There was a time when bikes were a domain of men, but like everything else this too  is no longer true and women are excelling in everything including biking. There are even exclusive biking clubs for women in India now, like The Bikerni started by Urvashi Patole.  This particular picture was a random picture clicked outside the Hauz Khas Metro Station, and for some reason it is the 9th most liked picture on desi Traveler Instagram feed.

The above picture or vegetables  is my efforts to learn some food photography as I was preparing to make some pasta for a competition.  To see more about this special pasta dish from the Italian town Siracuas check this post about Timballo Siciliano 
From the scenic Sicily let us go to India Pakistan border where I recently clicked this picture of a pickup truck, painted like colorful trucks in Pakistan. Now India and Pakistan compete on everything from Cricket to who is apple of eye of Uncle Sam. Without going into where all we are ahead and where the Pakistanis lag behind, one thing we have to give to our long lost brothers on other side of border is that they sure know how to decorate and paint their trucks. 🙂 . If you are visiting Wagah border on the India side you can find this and more such trucks parked in the compound of Sarhad Restaurant just a few KM before the actual India Pakistan Border.

Well this one is my favorite for more reasons than one. First of all I like this picture because I could click the Monastery in Petra with a unique perspective, second this picture also appeared in JetWings Magazine’s ( Jet Airway’s in-flight magazine ) international edition,where my post about Petra by Night was first published, and thirdly this was the first picture on desi Traveler to cross half century mark of likes.

This simple picture above for some reason was liked by readers. Now looking at this Sunset one may wonder if it was clicked in Kerala or Goa, but the fact is that it was clicked in rural Rajasthan
and that too with my cell phone.

The above picture is a large panaroma of Chao Phraya river during Loi Krathong festival, and the square compressed format of Instagram is unable to display the image like it appears in my post. Do check the high resolution pictures of Loi Krathong festival in Thailand  here.

Well this one is actually from Kerala and hopefully justifies my belief that Kerala has some of the best Sunsets in India.
The above picture of a lady lighting a lamp was deliberately clicked out of focus to showcase the magical mood on the ghats of  Benaras, during the festival of Dev Diwali.  While there is a daily evening Aarti in Varanasi, it is on Dev Diwali that all the ghats are illuminated using countless oil lamps in honor of the river goddess Ganga maiya or Holy Ganges as the firangs called her.

Now before we go to the most liked picture on desi Traveler ( as the likes on dT are nothing like 1000s of likes some instagrammers get ), here is the picture  that was most commented on. Surprisingly this is a simple Carrot, Radish and Chilies  pickle served with Parathas in the internationally world famous in Universe  ” Parathe Walee Galee ” in Chandni Chowk.  The picture was clicked during a special food walk in Chandni Chowk with my friends Chef Zahie Talez and Chef Geraldo from Mexico.

 

And finally we have the above picture clicked during the rare celestial phenomenon of Super Blood Moon. Though I did not get the full pictures due to the building in the background, it did helped me learn a thing or two about photographing moon.
So dear readers this summarizes the top 11 pictures from 2015 on my Instagram.  Of the above 11 pictures one was on the December 2015 Calendar and one will be found in the 2016 Calendar. Any guesses which one of the above pictures has made  to the 2016 desi Calendar with pictures clicked during my travels and chosen by readers of desi Traveler. If I try to find a pattern in these most liked pictures, I am unable to pinpoint anything. If you still have to find a common factor in these pictures is that most of them were clicked in evening or in night. May be I should click more often in night.

 

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  14 Responses to “Baby Steps To Learning Instagram”

Comments (14)
  1. Great post and photos Prasad! I just got on the Instagram bandwagon and love it! I am still very new out there but lets see how I can make it grow in the year to come.

  2. That’s a fab idea for an year end post 🙂 Thanks !

    I will also compile something similar.

  3. Nice ones! I used to miss the old flickr a lot – instagram is nowhere close to it but I am beginning to enjoy it, just wish it could be a little more interactive!

  4. And they are beautiful too! Now you have given me an idea for a post too! 😀

  5. I am not at all active on instagram so this post was pretty insightful. Will explore it sometimes soon. And you have clicked some gorgeous pics.

  6. I actually joined Instagram just a couple of months back. Just for fun. Yes, I agree with your points. Also if I wish to share someone’s picture, I don’t know how to on Instagram. I just login once in a few days currently. Don’t really have any plan for it currently. But I can see it as being a perfect medium for your gorgeous photographs.

  7. got some good tips.. will try out. I have been lazy to use too many tags

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