AWS Joins Instagram!

By Melany Hughes

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”

“Take a picture. It will last longer.”

“Seeing is believing”

These clichés are ones we all know well. But today, we want the Association of Women Surgeons community to truly embrace them. The AWS has joined Instagram (@associationofwomensurgeons) and we want your photos. Whether at work or play,  AWS wants to show the world how each of us works, lives and loves as women surgeons. Whether or not you are currently sharing photos in your personal social media accounts, we want to share those special, silly, serious moments with all of the AWS community.  We are looking for photo submissions via email or messaging/tagging our Instagram account (@associationofwomensurgeons).

FAQs

What is Instagram?

Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing, and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, and share them either publicly or privately on the app, as well as through a variety of other social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr. Instagram is a fun and quirky way to share your life with friends. Snap a photo with your mobile phone, then choose a filter to transform the image into a memory to keep around forever.

How much is the app?

$0.00 – available for free in the Apple App Store and Google Play store.

What does the “@” sign mean?

If you’re new to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, you may have heard of “tagging” but aren’t really sure what it means.  Simply put, tagging identifies someone else in a post, photo or status update that you share.  A tag can be used to notify someone that you have mentioned them in a post or a photo, and provides a link back to their profile. You can tag someone in a photo to identify them in the photo. You can tag someone in a status update to make sure that they see that post. On some social media sites you might see names preceded by the “@” symbol.  The “@” symbol indicates that someone is tagged. For example if you want to get someone’s attention on Instagram you can tag them in a comment by entering their username preceded by “@”.  You can also follow someone by searching their username with the “@”.

10 Instagram Cliches to Avoid:

1. Feet on the Beach
2. Clouds
3. Food Pictures
4. Nail Art
5. Inspirational Quotes
6. Tall Buildings Shot From the Ground
7. Coffee Art
8. Copies of Text Conversations
9. Bathroom Mirror Selfies
10. Sunsets

On the other hand, here are some quotes, inspiring us to take a new “look” at our lives and hopefully shoot and share them with AWS:

1. “Only photograph what you love.”
2. “It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.”
3. “There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.”
4. “The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.”
5. “To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”
6. “Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.”

So we are looking to share those moments in your life that only another surgeon, researcher, student, teacher, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister or woman could understand on our @associationofwomensurgeons 

Melany Hughes, MD, MPH is a 2005 graduate of the Howard University College of Medicine.  She completed her General Surgery internship and residency at the Howard University Hospital in Washington, DC in June 2010.  In the fall of 2010, with an interest in global and humanitarian medicine and surgery, she moved to New Orleans, LA to pursue a Master of Public Health Degree in Disaster Management and Emergency Preparedness at Tulane University (TU).  While at TU she received a research appointment with the World Health Organization’s Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (WHO-CRED) in Brussels, Belgium.  Her work specifically focused on the analysis of trauma and injury patterns seen after disaster events (both man-made and natural) and contributed to several multi-national collaborative research projects and publications.  After completing her MPH degree in 2012 and with a continuing commitment to public service and humanitarian work she has served as a General Surgeon and Medical Officer with the U.S. Indian Health Service; providing healthcare to the Hopi and Navajo Nations in northwest Arizona.  Dr. Hughes strives to practice “socially-conscious” general surgery and currently is employed as a private practice surgeon with Hafa Adai Specialist Group in Guam, USA