It’s my year-end tradition to highlight the year’s posts that were most read, commented, and liked.
Thank you for being a part of the Down the Road community this year! I couldn’t have imagined when I started this blog how much I would come to enjoy interacting with you.
Can I ask you to take another look at my five personal favorite posts from 2016? I really put my heart into them, and I’d love it if they’d get a little more attention.
- Fortune’s careless aim: The myth that hard work alone creates success — This unusually long post tells how luck, resources, and circumstance determine success far more than hard work does.
- Wait. Always wait. It always gets better. — At church, we lost a young adult to suicide. I’ve walked on the edge of that more than once, and know from experience that the difficulties you face are always temporary.
- What heavy metal music has to do with Donald Trump and our nation’s disaffected working class — I seldom post about politics, but in the week leading up to this year’s Presidential election I wanted to share a perspective on the people who ultimately elected our next President.
- Online privacy for children and why you’ve never seen photos of my sons here — For the first time, I shared photos of my now-adult older son, and explained why I hadn’t before, and why I think we should all think more carefully about sharing photos of our children online.
- Driving and Singing: Megadeth, “Addicted to Chaos” — In which I tell the story of the monkey that was once on my back.
Perhaps the most obvious measure of popularity is pageviews. These posts got the most of those this year:
- Whatever happened to Traders Point? — The story of a village in what is now Indianapolis that was razed almost 50 years ago, with photos and film from when it still stood. This post got shared around Facebook for weeks and enjoyed almost 5,000 views.
- The Pyramids, an Indianapolis landmark on the Michigan Road — The story of three pyramid-shaped office buildings, a northwest Indianapolis landmark. This also got passed around Facebook to the tune of almost 4,000 views.
- Konica Auto S2 — A review of a camera donated to my collection.
- Where to buy film for your camera — Film isn’t so easily available at retail anymore. I buy most of mine online. Here’s where.
- Yashica T2 — A review of another donated camera.
My favorite measure, however, is comments. I feel like I’ve written something interesting or valuable when lots of you feel compelled to write something in response. And I really enjoy interacting with you over your perspectives and ideas.
- Is it worth it to post-process your photos? — Of course, asking a question is a good way to prime the comment pump. I lamented the time it took to process 1,000 photos after returning from Ireland and wondered if you had efficient workflow tips to share.
- How do you back up your digital images? — I’ve been looking for an offline storage solution for my photo files and wondered what you’d had luck with.
- What’s the best compact 35mm camera to take on vacation? — As I prepared to go to Ireland, I knew I wanted to shoot some film there. But which camera? You offered ideas.
- The Pyramids, an Indianapolis landmark on the Michigan Road — Lots of people commented about their memories of this landmark.
- Vacation camera audition: Nikon N2000 with 35mm f/2.8 AI Nikkor lens — I’m not sure why this post resonated, but I’m not disappointed it did.
If you have a WordPress account, you can click a Like button on my posts. These posts were most Liked:
- This is a photography blog — I announced I was shifting this blog’s focus to be mostly about photography. It got picked up on Flipboard, driving some views and the most likes of any post ever on this blog.
- Engaged — I announced my engagement, and of course you liked that!
- Arresting views at Glengesh Pass — I shared photos of a deep valley in County Sligo, Ireland.
- Inside the bridge at Bridgeton — A photo I took a couple years ago from inside this wooden covered bridge.
- Three-way tie:
- A barn in the city — A barn, once part of a farm, now anchors a subdivision.
- How to get into film photography on the cheap — Camera recommendations for someone curious about film photography.
- Irish sunset at 80 kph — A brilliant orange sunset, photographed from the passenger sear of a moving car.
For giggles, here are this blog’s most-viewed posts of all time:
- Where can you still get film developed? — This post remains a top-five Google search result when people want to know if their nearest drug store still processes film. Its momentum appears to finally be slowing; it got 20% fewer views this year than last. Still, this year it got 85% more views than the next most popular post.
- Cameras — This is the homepage for all the cameras I’ve reviewed here. I think it gets mostly organic views, that is, people come here for other reasons and then click the Cameras link that’s on every page.
- Review: Wolverine Super F2D — This cheap film-to-digital converter has been superseded by newer models, yet this review still gets a lot of visits.
- What’s a guy who still shoots film supposed to do? — A post in which I lament the loss of inexpensive drug-store film processing.
- Yashica MG-1 — A camera review. Apparently, few others have reviewed this camera and so my review gets all of the Internet search love.
