Instagram Photo Find

Find high-quality Instagram photos for any destination or place. Searches for Instagram posts via web search, downloads candidate images, vision-scores them for quality and iconic-ness, and returns the best matches with source URLs. Use when you need travel/destination photos from Instagram, hero images for a location, or Instagram post images for any place or attraction.

Find the best Instagram photo for a given destination or place name.

Workflow

Step 1 — Search for Instagram post URLs

Search Brave for: site:instagram.com/p/ {destination} popular photo

• Request 10 results
• If the destination is a specific attraction/restaurant, use its name directly (e.g. site:instagram.com/p/ "Barton Springs" Austin)

Step 2 — Filter candidates by title

From search results, pick the top 5-6 candidates based on titles that suggest scenic/visual content:

Prefer titles with:

• Visual/emotional language ("beautiful", "colors", "stunning", "golden hour", "aerial", "skyline")
• Specific landmark names
• Travel/photography language ("travel", "explore", "photography")

Skip titles that suggest:

• Brand/corporate posts (Nike, concerts, conferences)
• Personal diary posts ("photo dump", "my trip")
• Celebrity/influencer selfies
• Non-photo content (events, announcements)

Step 3 — Download images

For each candidate, extract the image via:

text

https://www.instagram.com/p/{shortcode}/media/?size=l

• Use curl -s -L (follows the 302 redirect to CDN)
• Skip any that return non-200 or < 10KB (likely broken/removed)
• Save to /tmp/ with descriptive names

Step 4 — Vision-score each image

Run each downloaded image through the vision model with this prompt:

Describe briefly. Rate 1-10 as a hero destination photo for {destination} (iconic, scenic, represents the place well). Description + score only.

Step 5 — Return results

Return images ranked by score. For each result, provide:

• Score and brief description
• Instagram post URL (instagram.com/p/{shortcode}/)
• Local file path

Parameters

• destination (required): Place name (e.g. "Mexico City", "Taormina Italy", "Barton Springs Austin")
• count (optional, default 2): How many top results to return
• search_variant (optional): Additional search terms to append (e.g. "photography", "travel guide")

Tips

• For broad destinations (cities/countries), the generic search works well
• For specific attractions, quote the name: "Palacio de Bellas Artes"
• If first search yields low scores (< 6), retry with landmark-specific queries
• The /media/?size=l endpoint requires no authentication
• Carousel posts return only the first image
• Video posts may return a thumbnail