Instagram was created to show people how much more exciting your life is compared to your followers’ lives in a “simple” picture with a witty and clever caption. What better way to fulfill these unwritten and unspoken ideals than to exploit your vacation? Vacations are only as good as their pictures are, anyways. But with great power comes great responsibility - of not becoming an Instasshole. 

Don’t Instagram your entire vacation. 

If you wanted me there, you should have invited me, that one’s on you.  

You only need one geo-tag per destination. If you post an interesting picture and it’s not geotagged, it’s likely that your followers will back stalk you until they find where you are.

 
All the while going through your other Instagrams and seeing how cool you make yourself look they are.  

No selfies. Unless you’re a Kardashian, save that for Snapchat. 

5 second rule: this applies to general Instagrams but it’s very useful on vacation because of time differences and what not. You have about 5 seconds in between all the regretable actions on Instagram to unlike or delete a picture or unfollow someone you may have no meant to.

 

But on vacation, this extends to about 5 minutes. 

It’s universally known that if you’re not eating and drinking your way through your vacation, then you’re just doing it wrong. Instagramming each one of these meals/ drinks is practically as tiresome and aggravating as a Black Friday sale. 

The caption is half the battle. Using a song lyric is…just no. 

 

Steer away from food puns. 

The plastic surgery app is an art form. If there’s ANY trace of you using that blessed thing, your followers will notice and will definitely tell all their friends. We know a curved stair when we see one.

If you have to spend more than 20 minutes editing a picture, stop. Enough contrast, you're turning orange.   

Using  X Pro, Valencia, Hudson, Walden, ect is so 2013. 

And Toaster is so 2000 and never...

If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

Prime time is 4-5 when people are getting back from the beach/slopes to shower and get ready for dinner. 

The “mirrored sunglasses with palm trees in the lenses’ reflection” Insta is pretty cliché and rapidly growing old. 

Less is more: the more energy you put into an Instagram, the more effortless it should look. 

You are not here to shoot an advertisement campaign. Chill. Take your Nikon to Tumblr.

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The goal is to make it look like you’re having more fun than anybody else in peoples’ news feeds while also being able to qualify as a photographer. If you get more than 1000 likes, does that make you a professional? Is that something you can put on your resume?