Angelina Hue

Over the last few months, I’ve been spending more time on Instagram than Facebook, which used to be the main social media platform that I hung out on.

My initial curiosity to understand what made some people so popular on this photo/video-sharing media unleashed an insatiable hunger to uncover stories from around the world. From those of ordinary people and communities in war-torn societies to culinary rituals and the impact of urbanisation on different corners of the world – there’s so much to be discovered.

I’ve often read that while Instagram has a huge character limit (2,200 versus 140 on Twitter), it is primarily a visual-led social media channel and succinct captions are preferred. I beg to differ.

Some people prefer to scan through their Instagram feed. I prefer to take my time to absorb the stories behind the frozen moments, the essays that give context to the images and the thoughtful recollections.

One of the reasons why I’ve not been active on my blog in the last months is because of Instagram. On average, I post about once every two or three days and I spend around 20 minutes to compose a photo caption. It’s harder to write something short and succinct than something long and rambling!

Am I overthinking things and giving excessive attention to social media? Perhaps. But if I were to publish anything, I either do it well and up to my standards or I don’t do it at all. And the way I want to do this is to share the hidden stories behind my photos.

With this, I leave you with some of my Instagram stories and I hope you’d enjoy them! Let me know what you think of them 🙂