Hopeful wanderlusts need to know that travel Instagrams aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. It’s easy to get caught up in the world of the vibrant, the colourful, the exotic – but it’s important to remember that travelling is not one big photogenic journey. On the mostpart, travelling is enriching and exciting – but sometimes it can be hard and exhausting.
To set off on an adventure expecting nothing less than a new ‘instagram-a-day’, and for every destination to look as beautiful as those posted on Instagram would be a mistake (albeit a relatively easy one to make, looking at the floods of awe-inspiring Instagrams posted on a daily basis).
These pictures (taken from Roundtheworldgirl, Jay Alvarrez and tourtheplanet) are beautiful – but they do not reflect the realities of travelling, and it’s sometimes easy to forget this.
Travel instagrams have become a brand.
The photos you’re deluged with when you log into Instagram often require a lot of money, specialist cameras and complex editing equipment to produce the seemingly natural and effortless shot. They don’t capture the disappointments of missing a sunset, attempting so many times to get the ‘perfect picture’ that the camera roll is maxxed out, or just the plain old days where every picture you take looks terrible – the lighting’s not good, it doesn’t look the same as it does in real life, you’re hungry and your arms hurt from holding your camera up too long etc etc. It happens to us all!That is in no way to say that all travel Instagrams are bogus misrepresentations of traveling, but it is important to note that Instagram users can use Instagram as a means of creating their own business. The better and more attractive the shot, the higher the following, the more opportunities that creates for the user. Traveling is an incredible, rewarding and wonderful experience, but it is not always as easy and carefree as it can appear!
An image like this, from Earthofficial – whilst incredible to look at – is most likely not taken by an amateur.
So, whilst this article reminds you fellow wanderlusts not to expect traveling to be as polished and easy as the Instagrams you’ve been scrolling through all these months, that’s not to say you won’t take some amazing pictures of your travels! Here are a couple our very own amateur HCX Wanderlusts have captured themselves (with a little help from the saturation filter and sharpening tools)!
The Bund in Shanghai, China
Sunset in Trondheim, Norway
Story behind the lense: What you don’t realise when looking at the photo above was that it took over 20 tries to get the perfect one, there had been no accessible showers for over 4 days and the budget was so diminished by this point on the trip that only two meals a day was affordable!
So keep scrolling those Instagrams, Wanderlusters, but do remember they only capture a small part of travelling, and the larger part will be the stories you can tell along the way!