Maybe you like to take photos from airplane windows. Or of monuments reflected in puddles. Perhaps you routinely train your lens on trees, or street signs or your own shadow.
The poetic images you capture when traveling can feel original and personal. But just as biologists name and group plants by categories such as kingdom, phylum and class, travelers on social media have developed a worldwide taxonomy and nomenclature for photos with shared characteristics.
These characteristics may include the angle from which the image was shot, the time of day it was taken, its theme, composition or location. That photo you took of the Eiffel Tower reflected in a pool of rainwater is a #puddlegram. The one of your shadow stretched across a park bench in Buenos Aires is a #shadowselfie. If you think you’re among a select few who photograph airplanes streaking across a sunset, check out the more than 414,000 photos on Instagram tagged #planespotting. For a solid, if not always appetizing, travel niche, see the more than 21,000 still lifes of #airportfood. And if you’re one of those travelers who has been photographed leaping into the air in front of a landmark or landscape, you’ve joined the ranks of those who have partaken in a #jumpstagram (there are about 97,000 of them on Instagram; the company has for years had tips on its blog about how to take the perfect jump shot).