Looking at the Fair through the Eyes of Instagram

Posted 8:42 p.m. Oct 13, 2012 — Updated 8:42 p.m. Oct 13, 2012

Instagram, if you haven't heard of it, is a photo-sharing service. Users can take pictures on their phones, run them through filters (or leave them plain) and post them to the service. People can get pretty creative using just their phones and I have seen some great shots!

You can follow individual users on the service or you can browse by the way people have tagged their photos. And now, thanks to a new site called WorldCam, you can also browse photos by where they were posted. WorldCam has a location listing for the Fair at http://worldc.am/id/4ad4c009f964a520e5ec20e3

Browsing through these pictures (and though I didn't see anything objectionable, please remember this is an unfiltered stream and people can do all kinds of silly at the Fair) I saw some things that I need to check out on my next visit (Weinermobile!) and some great views I'm probably going to keep missing (the midway, from the top of the Ferris wheel, late at night.)

The WorldCam service uses several APIs (Application Programming Interface), including FourSquare and Instagram, to make its service. It doesn't have all the NC State Fair pictures that you're might expecting. To see a larger list, check out Webstagram's NCStateFair tag search at http://web.stagram.com/tag/ncstatefair/ . There are over 950 pictures here, though I don't know how far back they go!

You can also check out some related tags as well. One of the workers at Joe's Big Dogs (between Dorton Arena and the Jim Graham Building) is posting pictures under the tag #ncstatefair2012. And Angi, aka TheFlyingHook, made a series of "behind the scenes" photos tagged #ncstatefairentry as she prepared items for the crochet contest.

Are you taking pictures at the Fair? Don't forget to submit them to WRAL as well! Check out our "Your 2012 Fair Photos" gallery and click the "Submit Photos" button to send us your masterpieces.

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