It’s that season—you hop on Instagram, and somehow, every single person on your timeline is on vacation. Whether it be a perfectly posed beach photo or a faux-candid, “Oh, you caught me taking a cutesy little sip of wine!” moment that Instagram opts to show you, seeing enough travel posts might start to spark a teensy bit of jealousy and make you wonder how each one looks so breezy and perfect and effortless.
Plot twist: They are not. The vacay snapshots on social media are the result of more planning, posing and polishing than you’d think at first glance.
My sources? Myself. Speaking as someone who just spent two weeks in Europe and probably hours of my life switching between Lightroom and the Feed Preview app, I can assure you that many (if not most) vacation pics fail to reflect the real-life travel experience. They don’t catch the frizzy hair, the sweat stains that tend to accompany 90-plus-degrees temperatures or any other inevitable, not-so-cute side effects of human existence. Capturing a “candid” vacation pic whilst avoiding these day-to-day variables can become A Whole Thing, and we’re going to unpack the process.
I’ve included five of my recent Instagram pictures alongside their corresponding OG camera roll versions, and I’ll break down what went into making each one Insta-worthy. Take a peek at the pics below to find out how it’s done, courtesy of PATTERN’s resident social media savvy 20-something.
Rome, Italy
There are an exorbitant amount of people visiting the Trevi Fountain at any given daylight hour, and you’ll be lucky to snag a photo without anyone else in the background. I am no exception. My preferred fix? The editing app Touch Retouch. I bought it for no more than $3 back in 2017, and while it can be a little finicky at times, it is so worth it. You can use a variety of relatively simple clone stamping and background-editing tools to retouch unwanted objects out of photos. It’s clutch.
I would also like to note that this photo is absolutely not candid, nor are the majority of “candid” photos on Insta. This “candid” is the product of me instructing my younger brother to take a picture of me, and I am 100% posing in it. While I would love for some kind of paparazzi photo squad to have captured me spontaneously smiling and fixing my glasses, that is not the case.
You might also notice that IRL, the building behind me is not a fluorescent yellow hue. I switched its color mainly because I felt the yellow looked better on my feed than the OG orange shade would have. Purely superficial.
Dubrovnik, Croatia
This photo was taken right before an oyster tasting in Croatia. I didn’t change a ton beyond the brightness and saturation in this photo, but I did make a few tiny tweaks on Facetune. I brightened my white shorts using the “teeth whitening” feature, which happens to be handy for more than teeth. Also, to counteract the blueish tones on my face, I added a bit of the “glow” brush.
The most deceitful part of this post might be how I made my caption sound like I might be an oyster connoisseur. I wrote “raise your hand if you like oysters, too!” as if the last time I had eaten oysters wasn’t at a tourist trap restaurant in Panama City Beach like, four years ago. Anyways, I messed up the oyster-eating big time and got oyster juice all over my face. Not cute, but you’d never know from this post.
Athens, Greece
I posted this photo after taking a cooking class in Athens. While I was out, I forgot to take any pics, but I still really wanted to show off my outfit. So, when we got back to our cruise ship, I spent probably half an hour taking timer selfies until I liked one. This was a process. I also wanted my face and body to look good, which is no easy task for someone harboring a bloated belly full of tzatziki and white wine. Here, I am sucking in my stomach, twisting my hips and clenching my jaw. I am fully twisted like a pretzel, all for the gram. And that’s all pre-edits.
To give myself a baby tan, I turned down the exposure. I also turned up the saturation to enhance the blue and green tones, as well as make my chapped lips seem a little less crusty. Perhaps a narcissistic endeavor, but there’s really nothing humble about any vacay post.
Aegean Sea, Greece
Remember the camera roll full of pics I just showed you? Imagine that, but tripled. That’s how many photos it took for me to find just one that I liked. My travel photographer—AKA my 20-year-old brother—was ready to kill me. But I was in my teeniest bikini and feeling more self-conscious than average, so the odds were against me. However, there’s an incredible hack for bikini pics that doesn’t involve editing one’s body (which, despite my liberal photo-tweaking, I don’t condone). If you take a photo using the wide-angle iPhone lens, you’ll look further away and more focus will be placed on the background. Just make sure you’re centered, or else you’ll wind up with an awkwardly distorted limb.
It goes without saying that I cranked the saturation up again. What can I say? I love colorful photos.
Santorini, Greece
Climbing rocks can be a fun and spontaneous vacation activity—but not in four-inch platform flip-flops. While this rock couldn’t have been taller than waist-height, I probably risked a broken ankle for the express purpose of taking this photo. I included a real, notably unflattering candid here to showcase how much of a struggle it was (click the arrow on the right-hand photo to see!). To get down, I had to scoot on my butt, and a tour group of probably 30 people watched it all happen.
Clearly, I also cranked the saturation and altered the colors in this photo. It turned out cute, but it was far from a “Mamma Mia moment.” I stood on some rocks at a pier while waiting for a boat to show up because I thought it would look cool. That’s all.
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The next time you peruse Instagram and start to compare yourself to the perfect-looking people on your screen, remember that nothing is real on social media, especially when it comes to vacation photos. It’s possible to have an amazing trip without looking like an Insta baddie. Not even the Insta baddies look like that IRL, and that is perfectly fine.
