Get holiday pics without travelling
There was a time when your travel destination determined your photos. Now, experts say, your photos increasingly determine your travel destination.
That’s because Instagram has turned ‘‘travel bragging’’ – posting alluring images from exotic locales to one-up your followers – into something of an art form.
Amass enough followers and you could gain influencer status, allowing you to leverage your ‘‘social media clout to travel the world, frequently in luxury’’.
That goal may partly explain why surveys are beginning to show that significant numbers of millennials spend multiple hours a day on their smartphones while travelling and would prefer posting jealousy-inducing selfies to photos with loved ones.
Now companies are beginning to capitalise on the pressure to post awe-inducing photos on social media as well. Among the most successful is Krome Photos, a photo editing website that uses artificial intelligence to pair people with professional photo editors who can take your images and transform them to make it look like you’re anywhere in the world.
Eduardo Llach, the company’s chief executive and founder, says these days ‘‘your online persona is everything and people are realising that photos give you the ability to create whoever you want to be’’.
Llach said for some that means creating detailed images that place them in iconic locations around the world, images in which lighting is perfected, teeth are whitened and skin is tanned.
As people become more image conscious online, he added, the primary forces driving people to his site are Instagram and Facebook.
‘‘Instagrammable really means, ‘Am I taking a photo of something that I want someone to – quite frankly – be a little jealous of?’ We here call it a ‘hashtag travel brag’,’’ Jennifer Dohm of Hotels.com told ABC affiliate WFAA.
The news outlet reported that CheapCarribean.com sold a package to Bermuda that paired travellers with social media experts who provided Instagram coaching. The package’s name: ‘‘Vacation Envy’’.
For some, Instagram filters are already passe. Now, Llach noted, people are beginning to rely on artificial intelligence.
‘‘What we’ve done is added machine learning that takes your photo and compares it to 300,000 other consumer-submitted photos to give you a suggested design and background,’’ Llach said. ‘‘Once you’ve chosen a background, you can make custom requests, such as brightening your teeth or softening your skin and then our AI will find the best editor for your particular requests.’’ - The Washington Post