Life,  Musings & Thoughts

Instagram Tag

     I haven’t done a tag post in so long! I’ve been pretty busy this week in the run up to Christmas though, so this was a nice, quick option for a post. Instagram is probably my most used social media account. I have plenty of others (linked in the sidebar there), but it varies how active I am on those, whereas Instagram I keep up with regularly. I think it’s partly because you aren’t flooded with people posting all the time (Twitter) or sharing content that isn’t always relevant or what I’m interested in (Facebook), but I can still use it to keep up with people’s lives. I’m also quite a visual person, so photos appeal to me a lot, and my feed is curated to what I want to see regularly. Anyways, I found this set of tag questions online, so here we go!

Instagram logo
(source)

1. What is your Instagram name?
It’s the same as this very blog, and most of my social media handles, @justmuddlingthroughlife

2. When did you start your Instagram account?
Well it turns out I started it back in March 2013 – I can’t believe that’s almost six years ago now! I was pretty late to the game compared to some people, but I remember I’d just got a new iPod Touch at the time, and decided to give it a try.

3. What was the first picture you posted on Instagram?
It seems I posted several at once that first day, I was clearly so excited by it all, but this was the very first one. It was taken in Disney World, Florida, a few years earlier – no idea why I thought that filter was a good idea.

4. How often do you post pictures?
It’s varied over the years, but recently I would say typically 2-3 per week. It’s often daily when I’m travelling and constantly seeing new things, and less frequent when I’m less busy and therefore don’t have as much to post about.

5. What is your least favourite photo on Instagram?
I’m looking back at a lot of my early posts and there’s a lot of them I don’t like now, as they’re over-filtered, or the quality is just horrible (that’s the level of phone camera we had back then though I guess!). This is certainly one of my least favourites though! I mean, just… why?

6. What picture do you have the most likes on?
It’s this one I took a few months ago in Edinburgh, of the New College courtyard, on top of the Mound. I still don’t know how it sparked so many likes, when my average is usually around 50-60 or so – do any of us really understand Instagram’s algorithms though? This is also not counting a photo of mine that was reposted to a larger account here, and wound up with over 5, 000 likes!

7. Do you have any Instagram pet peeves?
I’m not a fan of when people post lots of photos all at once, so it clogs up most of your feed! I like the diversity of accounts I follow, and the fact that most only post their best images, not absolutely everything, so I hate accounts that post too much. Especially now there’s the gallery feature, no excuse for it!

8. What type of accounts do you follow?
It’s a combination of friends, celebrities, and just accounts I like. I follow a lot of travel and landscape photography accounts, just because I love those images. I only follow celebrities I really like, plus some bloggers that have nice feeds. And I only follow close friends, or those whose feeds I like, not every single person I know!

9. Is your Instagram private or public?
Mine is public, since I use it to promote these blog posts sometimes, so it makes sense that I want new people to see it. I tend to avoid posting anything super personal as well, because of that.

10. What is your favourite picture you have posted?
There are so many that I like, mostly because of the experiences that they remind me of! But purely as a photograph in itself, I really like this one I took of a field of thistles earlier this year. It was a quick snap while having a day out, but I think it looks really pretty!

11. What is your most recent post?
Well, it depends when you’re reading this, but at the time of me writing and posting this, it would be this one here, from a very frosty morning in Edinburgh a couple of days ago.

A post shared by Charlotte (@justmuddlingthroughlife) on

12. Do you do anything with your Instagram photos?
Not really? I like having physical photo albums, so usually I print out a bunch of photos every so often to make them with, but that isn’t limited to Instagram photos, that includes lots more that I don’t post. I like scrolling back through my feed sometimes, to look back on my highlight moments, and sometimes I use Instagram to promote this blog, but otherwise that’s it.

13. What is your most recent video post?
I don’t post videos very often – I’m more likely to share them in my story instead. Usually when I do though, there is an accompanying photo first, then the video is in the next slide of a gallery. So, my most recent was this, from a You Me At Six concert a couple of weeks ago.

14. Would you allow your kids to have an Instagram account?
Once they were old enough, yes, but it would have to be a private account to begin with. I’d maybe let them have an account around age 13 or so (I have a cousin that age with a private account, as do most of her friends), but it would have to remain private until they were at least 16, maybe 18, I think. I’m actually glad I didn’t have an account at that age, as I’d probably have posted stuff that I’d be embarrassed about now!

15. Show us the last thing you ate on Instagram?
I don’t post food photos very often – again, more likely to add them to my story instead – so when I do, it’s only if it’s particularly photogenic, or tasty, or from a specific occasion. One of the most recent was technically these cocktails, but that’s not a food! So then the last was way back in September, when having dinner out with a friend at one of my favourite Edinburgh restaurants!

16. If you could only follow five accounts, which would you choose?
Oh that is so hard! I don’t know if I’d want to prioritise friends, and people whose lives I’m actually interested in, or accounts that I think are really pretty! For the sake of this tag, I’ll go with the latter for now, five accounts I really like: @bymariandrew, @walasavagephoto, @seamerias, @lonelyplanet, and @hannahargyle.

17. If you could swap your account with someone else’s, which would you choose?
I wouldn’t. I like that my Instagram feed shows the highlights reel of my life. Every so often I like to scroll back through it to remember the things I’ve done and places I’ve been, and I would lose that if I swapped with someone else!

18. Is there a person you tend to post the most pictures of?
Probably myself! I don’t post a lot of photos of people anyways, so you have to scroll back quite a bit in my feed to find any. Family and friends do pop up sometimes though, usually if it’s been for a special event or occasion. My face is probably the one that appears most often, though definitely not excessively – again, it’s usually from a special event or only when it’s a photo I really like!

Answer this tag yourself and share it in the comments!