New research by SINGULART has been conducted to reveal the UK's most photographed buildings and architecture, by looking at statistical data from the number of posts created across relevant hashtags.
Unsurprisingly, four of London's most beautiful buildings reside at the very top of the list, starting with Big Ben followed by Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, and The Shard, comprising the top four with the largest number of Instagram posts.
The research specifically focuses on the most photographed UK landscapes and pieces of architecture in modern times, with data collected solely using social media platform, Instagram. SINGULART is an online art and design gallery that supposedly looked at 40 of the UK's most popular architecture that has been cross-referenced with the most relevant hashtags on Instagram, where this data has been pooled from.
While there are still a large number of photographers and travel seekers who respectfully avoid apps such as Instagram, it's without a doubt that it is one of the most-used and most popular apps by photographers. Although, the data collected in this research should be considered as relatively limited in its findings.
Having excluded those who solely use Facebook, Flickr, and alternative apps to share their best architectural images, this data should evidently be taken with a pinch of salt. It is also extremely common for users to upload images with location tags as opposed to hashtags, meaning these figures could vary drastically from the truth, though, the results are certainly interesting to consider and reflect the predicted popularity of UK buildings.
London's Big Ben was revealed to be the most photographed construction across Great Britain, with 3.2 million posts curated under #bigben. Furthermore, the infamous Tower Bridge, one of London’s Neo-Gothic architectural landmarks racked up 2.6 million Instagram posts.
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Buckingham Palace situated in third rank, a beautiful centrepiece of the UK’s constitutional monarchy, with 1.3 million posts on Instagram. Eight out of the top fifteen ranked architectures were in London, including the Shard, The Tower of London and St Paul’s Cathedral.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Rank
Landmark
Location
Hashtag searched
Number of posts
1
Big Ben
London
bigben
3,200,000
2
Tower Bridge
London
towerbridge
2,600,000
3
Buckingham Palace
London
buckinghampalace
1,300,000
4
The Shard
London
theshard
800,000
5
Edinburgh Castle
Edinburgh
edinburghcastle
628,000
5
The Tower of London
London
toweroflondon
628,000
6
St Paul's Cathedral
London
stpaulscathedral
468,000
7
Windsor Castle
Windsor
windsorcastle
406,000
8
Brighton Pier
Brighton
brightonpier
342,000
9
Westminster Abbey
London
westminsterabbey
303,000
10
Cambridge University
Cambridge
cambridgeuniversity
246,000
11
Eden Project
Cornwall
edenproject
216,000
12
St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel
London
stpancras
203,000
13
York Minster
York
yorkminster
186,000
14
Hampton Court Palace
Surrey
hamptoncourt
177,000
Outside of the UK capital city we have Edinburgh Castle, ranked in joint 5th place with The Tower of London at 628,000 shared images at the time the data was collected. This seems a little odd that both locations would have the exact same number of posts, though it's presumable that the data collectors, SINGULART, rounded the figures up or down to reach a solid number in the thousands, meaning one of them may have been slightly ahead.
Windsor Castle has been ranked at number 7, one of several homes belonging to Queenie herself, at 406,000 images on Instagram, followed by sunny Brighton Pier coming in at number 8, with 342,000 images shared to Instagram of the famous pebble beach. Additionally situating outside of London is Cambridge University with a figure of 246,000 images shared to the platform at the time of data collection.
The Eden Project in Cornwall is a beautiful botanical garden and worthy of making the top 15 most loved and photographed UK architectures. The project has 216,000 images, just ahead of London's St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel with 203,000 hashtagged posts. York Minster is second to last on this list with 186,000 images though isn't far in front of the last ranking location, Hampton Court Palace in Surrey.
The data collectors have shared wisdom from professional photographer, Gregory Herp, who focuses his work largely on architecture that can be found and purchased via SINGULART's art gallery. Herp suggests that architecture photography is "not just a matter of standing at the bottom of a building, looking up and taking a picture! I have to look for my point of view, make these lines and volumes the actors of my image. Architecture is fascinating if I can make it bounce off something else in my composition."
He continues, "Look around you and look for another angle, try to get on a roof on the other side of the street, or shift your position completely by incorporating one or more elements into your composition that will reinforce your image. I often tell the story about the film that changed the way I look around: Dead Poets Society".
Be sure to Visit SINGULART's website to see the full results of the research carried out and shop original art to add flair and beauty to your home decor collection.
A staff writer for Digital Camera World, Beth has an extensive background in various elements of technology with five years of experience working as a tester and sales assistant for CeX. After completing a degree in Music Journalism, followed by obtaining a Master's degree in Photography awarded by the University of Brighton, she spends her time outside of DCW as a freelance photographer specialising in live music events and band press shots under the alias 'bethshootsbands'.
