@IGersDayton: the new Dayton Instagram account you MUST follow

There's a new Instagram account for Daytonians to follow.

@IGersDayton is a new Instagram account intended to share Dayton, by Dayton, for Dayton.

"I wanted a place to promote and encourage photographers around the area to create and share more photos around Dayton," says founder David Suter.

"It's a curated place to discover local photographers and places to explore around the area. It's also a place to promote future community events [and] Instameets and connect photographers of all levels. So it's very much about inspiring people to create more work featuring Dayton and connecting people in the community."

"This has been the way I've been able to explore other cities and find cool places. These communities are also the reason I have more go-to photography friends in neighboring cities than in Dayton. So I definitely want to change that."

After the @DaytonsBest Instagram account went dormant, a hole was left in the local social media photography scene. Suter mulled over the concept for quite some time before acting on creating the account.

"I waited for someone to do it and it just wasn't happening."

An inroduction to Tom Gilliam of DaytonGram at the Victoria Theatre Instameet in May proved to be a fortuitious moment.

"I wanted to revive DaytonsBest to feature photographers, but was concerned about having the time," Gilliam said. "I told him I wanted to get a team of moderators and that I wished someone else would step up and create an account to feature Dayton photographers if DaytonsBest couldn't be revived."

A photo posted by IGers Dayton (@igersdayton) on

"I'm very excited about IGersDayton. Even though I host InstaMeets which are for the IG community, the photos on DaytonGram are my own. The now defunct DaytonsBest account was serving the purpose of featuring great work by Dayton area photographers on IG. There has been a void for quite some time in that category," Gilliam said.

"It's funny because David and I were talking about this. I actually created a profile to do an IGersDayton account two years ago and deleted it because I didn't have time to do it. I was hoping someone would step up one day, create that account and run with it. And that person happened to be David."

The pair recently co-promoted the Instameet at the Dayton VA campus to much success. They plan to collaborate on co-hosting future InstaMeets for the Dayton IG community.

"It's picked up momentum faster than I expected, so I've been excited about that," Suter said. "The trickle of new people has been steady, and engagement has been good so far. I'm excited to collaborate with Tom on some future Instameets."

Want to submit your photos to @IGersDayton? Here's how:

  • Upload your photos of Dayton (and surrounding areas) to your Instagram account
  • Tag @IGersDayton in the photo
  • Tag #igersdayton in the caption

And don't forget to follow both @IGersDayton and @DaytonGram for beautiful views of Dayton.

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