on instagram

I'm usually late to the party - both figuratively and literally. In this case, I was at the Instagram party, I was just standing against the wall by myself...

I originally downloaded the Instagram app around the time it first came out (almost two years ago). Since 75% of the reason I have an iPhone is to take photos, I am a total sucker for photo apps: Hipstamatic, Tilt Shift Generator, Camera Bag, Best Camera, etc - I have them all. When I first downloaded Instagram, while I liked the filters, I didn't care about the photo-sharing aspect of it, so I never used it. After I all, I share photos on my blog and on Facebook, why did I need strangers being able to see all my iPhone photos through an app?

However, about a year ago, I started really liking and using the Instagram filters, and as a result was sharing my photos, though I didn't really care if anyone was looking at them. The good ones I cross-posted to Twitter anyway or posted on my blog. (See NJ, OBX, Good Beats, Good Eats, NYC, and DC.)  I was surprised when a handful of people started following me on Instagram, but I wasn't using the app for social networking. I still wasn't following anyone else. Again, I figured I'd see the good stuff on Twitter, blogs, and Facebook.

This weekend I decided to start following a few friends on Instagram and DUH! - the social networking aspect of Instagram is so much fun! Browsing a feed full of friends'/bloggers' photos is even more fun than reading Twitter. So yeah, I was at the party being a wallflower, but now I've finally started to socialize and mingle...

My photos typically fall into three categories: adventures, the pups, and food. Some pics from the past week or two:

Recent Adventures | Black Hill Regional Park in Boyds, Maryland. The re-opening of the Reflecting Pool after two years of renovations (this was Larry's project at work!). A Hemingway Daiquiri at J&G Steakhouse in DC. (The favorite cocktail of both Ernest Hemingway and Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema.)

The Pups | Always sleeping in weird places and photo-bombing my collections photos.

Labor Day Eats | It was a gray and dreary holiday weekend, so no barbecues or outdoor parties, but we still devoured a delicious (but not very photogenic!) Southern Summer Feast: Zucchini Bread Pancakes for breakfast, Cherry-Habanero Wings and sweet corn-on-the-cob for dinner, Old-Fashioned Banana Cream Pie for dessert.

P.S. If you want to follow me, I'm funnelcloud on Instagram. And if you've been following me, thanks so much for putting up with me while I was clueless and posting multiple pictures of the same thing - sorry about that! But there *are* still going to be a lot of dog photos!