Could have something to do with the intensity of the storm we experienced here in NYC yesterday....

http://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/2357/20120718/nyc-sto...

Every time I see that picture it makes me hate Instagram a little bit more.

Ya, is there a clean version of that picture somewhere?

Any reason in particular for that? Seems a bit harsh.

It removes all the fine features from the funnel, most of the color and contrast information, and shrinks the resolution. It made this photo worse in every way.

To be fair, that image wouldn't exist (nor would we be having this discussion) otherwise as it wouldn't have been published to Instagram. I can't comment in regards to the photographer's filter preference though...

Maybe the resolution would have been the same. But it's possible to upload a photo in Instagram without stopping to apply a filter, isn't it?

Nope, you can go sans filter. It's actually the first option - you have to scroll past it to get to the modifying filters. You can see it in step 2 here: http://help.instagram.com/customer/portal/articles/168150-ta...

This photo would have been incredible without the filters. Without Instagram, applying filters to every photo wouldn't be becoming the norm.