While I can understand being inspired by something and putting your own spin on it, I hate blatant copying. It’s hard to judge the new Instagram Stories any other way — they took what Snapchat created and integrated it into Instagram. While it’s true that some things are a bit different, it’s still theft. The surprising part is that I haven’t started hating Instagram, which has always been the preferred way to share my photography with the world. There is one feature that I would like to see added to Instagram Stories (or Snapchat for that matter), which would make it a better storytelling tool than it currently is…

Instagram Regular

I use ‘regular’ Instagram to post carefully curated series of photos from whatever trip I got back from. These are always post-processed shots, from a series of cameras — from iPhone to DSLR. I do not however document the trip itself online. Instagram Stories or Snapchat seems ideally suited to the task, but they both have one problem — they lack the tools to create a narrative, which has a beginning and an end, and to which I can link to or view at a later time. I do not want these photos or videos to disappear after 24 hours either.

Twitter Collections

Twitter created Collections back in 2015, but hasn’t promoted them enough. Furthermore, their creation is not possible from the native iOS or Android Twitter app¹. These are near perfect for what I need — the ability to document a trip, using various photography tools, which I am then able to link to, embed on a site, etc. My only problem is that I’d prefer to keep all my photography in one place.

Instagram Story Collections?

I would love to see something akin to Twitter Collections in Instagram Stories, which would allow me to create a narrative and document my travels. This tool should also have an embed option, so it can be integrated into the stories that I publish on various websites, with or without captions².

Please make this happen.