The Nordic Fit's Instagram account hit 20.000 followers yesterday, and I thought why not pick a few of my personal favorites from the past few years. While the blog has been running for nearly four years, my Instagram is still fairly new and I did enter the media quite a bit later than most. Anyway, my Instagram has kind of become my main channel now as I've had less and less time and energy to focus on the more time-consuming blog posts.

For me, Instagram tends to walk that optimal line of enabling nice daily content that's interesting and also informative without requiring unreasonable amounts of time (For comparison, an Instagram shot might take 1-10 minutes to do in its entirety, while a blog post probably takes 2-3 hours). I also like the platform for its possibilities when it comes to interaction with your readers and friends in general.

To celebrate the milestone and because I had some extra time during Finland's 99th independence day, I thought I'd pick 15 favorite pictures from my Instagram feed and let you know why I chose them.

1. Verona 2013 in a SuitSupply sport coat

An earlier picture when my personal taste was still a lot more fashion forward. Note the kind of cargo pants of my own design. One of the first pictures taken with my current camera as well.

2. The chest shot

Some time this autumn I started taking my daily outfit pictures on Instagram with this type of chest shots. While the picture quality is horrible, I must say I kind of like the format.

3. Orange an brown

I've always loved brown for both clothing and accessories, but I especially like it in this picture from the past summer. This picture format is something I also like to use when taking pictures for the blog - it shows all the key pieces while looking quite cool in general.

4. A close-up on the tie

One of the close up picture types I use when taking outfit pictures. In this particular picture, I really like the tie with the narrow braces and the mostly hidden watch.

5. The item posts

Like this shot of my gorgeous Kingfisher pocket square from Rampley & Co, I've always liked to share this type of content on my Instagram also. The autumn is always a nice time to do product reviews when you can utilize the nature into the media as well.

6. Finding those backgrounds

In all seriousness, the biggest difficulties in this type of casual blogging are the amount of cool backgrounds for pictures and the lack of daylight in the Finnish winter. This shot of Berg & Berg's ties in 2013 was taken on a random outside balcony floor that was available, and I actually really like the way (insdustrial) it looks.

7. The shoe shot

Looking back to the shoe shots I've had in the blog and also on my Instagram, the key things that have changed is really the quality of shoes and my skills in shoecare.

8. Walking or standing?

It's no secret that it's often easier to get more interesting and better-looking outfit pictures if you walk instead of stand like a robot. Still, I've started to prefer more static pictures over time.

9. Cognac Vass Shoes for spring

I've always loved doing shoe reviews on my new pairs. It's great to document a new pair in an "unspoiled" state, especially after giving the shoes a light polish.

10. Random fit pics

Every now and then there's a cool out of the oridinary picture as result of a photography session. This is one of them.

11. Pocket squares and neckwear

If you've followed The Nordic Fit before, you know I've always had a ton of different type of pocket square shots that mostly look something like the above picture. This particular look was for an opera last winter.

12. The Lookdown

For long, the cornerstone of my Instagram were the lookdown pictures like the one here. Whether you like or not, they do sum up the outfit neatly.

13. My serious face

A running joke seems to be the lack of smiling in my pictures. I have a serious face, get over it.

14. Casual looks

As I'm mostly wearing just suits nowadays, the amount of casual clothing in my blog has decreased a lot. I actually kind of miss that, but let's see what future brings. This is an oldie from 2014.

15. Bracelets? No thanks.

This was the last picture I found of me wearing a bracelet. I think already by this time I had mostly gotten over them, but for some reason I'm wearing one here. Mistake.