The amazing 'Best 2011 of Grids' posted on Instagram under the hashtag #bo2011 (1500 to date) started with our very own @Anglo. Here's her first grid, posted on December 28th, and how the meme took off in her own words:
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I was hoping for five or maybe 10 people to join in.
I made up the tag
#bestofAnglo2011, wandered back through my stream and tagged my favourite shots with it. I stopped tagging when I had made an IG-friendly square of images. Turns out that you need 16 shots to do make a square, 4x4, who'd have thought? I shared the grid and invited people to explore my personal 'best of' tag, like wrapping paper the blur was designed to add an element of surprise when people clicked the tag to see my 16 images in their own mini stream.
An End of Year Review is an obvious thing to do, but I also did this because I had a few images from early on in the year that I was really proud of and wanted to parade again. Equally, I knew I had missed lots of other people's best shots from the year (because I just can't be on IG that much), so I threw out the invite for others to make a grid. I did not include instructions, thinking it was obvious how to make the grid (I really got that wrong!)."
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Then ForwardTumble suggested using #bo2011 for the grid shots only, so they could be browsed all in one place. Go Tumble!
Then a few friends, with much more influence than me, did one:
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And things started to pick up speed. When it got to about 50 grids, I lobbed some proper instructions into the #bo2011 tag, because many people were asking 'what app did you use' (you don't need an app!), because some people were putting individual shots in with the grids (grrrr) and because the part ForwardTumble and I had played in creating the meme was getting lost in the stampede.
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And in a few days a little idea I expected to be taken up by me and a handful of followers went from 50 grids by the end of day one, to 750 by the start of New Year's Eve to 1400 by the end of New Year's Day.
So a huge thank you to everyone for doing it! I started off liking every image but there are now too many to do that, but in my heart I have.
The #Bo2011 tag is the ultimate box of chocolates. It's the best of the best of Instagram. It shows just how stunning iPhone photography can be. It's also demonstrates the huge difference in creativity that people can achieve with the same tool. I've seen girds full of bright coloured skies, macro insects, soft sepia Earlybirds, hard black and white architecture, the same puppy getting bigger and just balloons. It's a fascinating gallery I'll keep coming back to.
You can browse the tag here:
#bo2011
Here are some screen shots of the many, many grids out there. I'm sure you'll agree they look glorious all together.
HAPPY NEW YEAR !
If you like my photos, don't miss out on the next blog:
