“Travel, it leaves you speechless. Then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta

More accurately, a visual storyteller.

Everyone who’s every travelled knows, once you see and experience travel, you can’t wait to share it with the world through stunning images. It can be difficult to carry around a DSLR camera while you’re traveling, but luckily you can take great photos on your phone and with a little help of editing, turn them into masterpieces. Here are some of the tips I’ve used to edit travel photos for Instagram to capture my adventures.

I import all of my images into VSCO CAM first. I like the filters and editing options it provides more that Instagram’s native filters. And the best part is, it’s free. You can adjust color, skin tones, and details in VSCO before importing your image into Instagram. In addition, VSCO lets you save the presets you use on your images so that you can apply them to multiple images for a cohesive feed.

I love images that are bright, vivid, and colorful, the way I see my travel experiences. After I’ve imported the image into Instagram, I often adjust brightness and contrast. Then I adjust the sharpness to make the image pop in my feed.

It has also been shown through study of color theory and analytics that images that have the color blue or a blue tint, preform better. It may have something to do with the fact that so many people’s favorite color is blue. Either way, blue tint makes your images appear to be more appealing to the eye!

I tag my photos with the location where the image was taken. This way, my feed is curated and anyone who sees it is able to see where the photo was taken.

Hashtags help categorize your images so that they appear in relevant categories. I hashtag my images with the name of the city, top destination, and other information about the images. This helps boost the engagement and helps others discover my images.

Hopefully you find this list list useful to capture your adventure of Instagram to share with friends and family. Want more of Instagram? Check out my post on 5 Instagram Accounts To Inspire Your Next Adventure.

Just remember to not spend your whole trip with your nose in your phone! Share your favorite Instagram tips in the comments!