Who knew half a million Instagram followers would want to look at hotel carpet?
When corporate pilot and photographer Bill Young travels around the world, he documents the carpets at the hotels in which he stays.
The Dallas resident’s travelogue began in August 2015 with carpet from the airport Marriott in Cincinnati.
Amazingly, since that first post, Young’s My Hotel Carpet close-up shots of interesting carpets have amassed over 670,000 followers on Instagram (@myhotelcarpet). Hotel carpet has come a long way from boring vanilla Berber. His posts include intricate, antique and psychedelic patterns.
Young’s daughter Jill led a viral campaign in November to get her pop’s Instagram project some traction among her friends at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is majoring in fine arts. It worked.
“I basically went from 83 followers to over 500,000 in just a few days. The media took notice,” Young said.
He spends a ton of time in hotels, as his pilot job takes him all over the world. His
Marriott app shows 1,767 nights logged. Recent posts include carpets in Barcelona; Nagoya, Japan; Los Angeles; Cologne, Germany; Amsterdam; and the Choctaw Casino in Oklahoma.
“While staying at the various hotels, I noticed that they often have crazy carpet patterns,” he said. “I took a few photos of the more intricate designs and uploaded them to my professional page. The carpet images didn’t really flow with the rest of the pictures. My wife, Heidi, recommended starting a new profile to just feature the carpet, so I did.”
It was basically done on a whim.
“It gave me something to do on layovers. Search out crazy carpets and upload them to the site.”
Of course, Young, 49, doesn’t just shoot carpet on his travels; he also has a busy photography career.
“My schedule has me traveling all over the world, and I often find myself with time on my hands. Photography gives me a chance to explore, with the mission of shooting the local flavor of wherever I happen to be. I’ve been shooting for about a decade, as a side business,” he said. “I like photographing people, mostly, but am interested in all facets of photography.”
He credits to his daughter (@JillIsYoung) with this Instagram success.
“I’m excited for Jill and what she was able to make happen. Regardless of where this ultimately ends up, she will have a fun and sweet story she can tell for the rest of her life.”