I need life to slow down a bit.  In the past 14 days we have driven to Houston for a long weekend, had family in town and made another trip to Omaha.   The time spent with family was wonderful.

However, there is just not enough hours in my days to accomplish everything I want to do.  I have been trying to take advantage of any chance I get to mark a few things off the To-Do List.  One of those items was to learn more about Instagram.  As a lover of photography I am always looking for new learning opportunities in that field.  I had done a little research but was “officially” schooled on our long drive to Houston by my 20-something daughter.  She even threw in a tutorial on Twitter.   Everyone knows that the best place to get educated in social media subjects is from a twenty year old.  This is the group that can text faster than they can talk and only use e-mail if they are forced by school or job communications.

Simply put, Instagram is a one stop application for picture taking, photo editing and sharing on social media sites.   A friend recently asked me what was the difference was between Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.  I am no expert but I would summarize it as this; Facebook is sharing in a paragraph, twitter is sharing in a sentence and Instagram is sharing in a picture.

If you love photography like I do, Instagram makes the process so very easy.  I can take a picture using the app, edit it with filters, borders, cropping, rotating or straightening, then I can share it immediately on Instagram, Facebook or various other social media sites.  There is no uploading to my laptop, editing with photoshop, then uploading to Facebook.  Don’t get me wrong, I love taking pictures with my big camera and I love, love, love editing in photoshop, but that all takes time.  Sometimes it is fun just to take a quick pic and share.

If you have not jumped on the Instagram bandwagon yet, here are the quick steps to create an account on your iphone.  Instagram is also available for android phones and soon a Windows phone version will be released.

Open the apple app store, search for instagram and install.  It’s free!

Once installed on your phone, select Register.

Enter a username, password and email address.

The app will then ask you if you want to find your facebook and contact friends that are on Instagram.  You can bypass these questions if you want. There is a detailed tutorial at INSTAGRAM.com that explains all the features if you need more info.  In a nutshell, the following information is all you need to know.  The rest is fairly intuitive.

There are five main tabs at the bottom of the screen.

1.  Home Tab – shows a feed of pictures posted by you and the people you follow.

2.  Explore Tab – search for users, pictures and hashtags.  Make sure you find and follow me!

3.  Camera tab – this is where you take, edit and share pictures.

4.  Newsfeed tab – displays the likes and comments on your posts.

5.  Profile tab – shows your bio and instagram pictures.

I am just getting started with Instagram myself so still learning new things, but I hope you sign up so I see all those great pictures you are taking!!!!