Do you love to travel?
Do you love to take photos?
If you are anything like me I’ll bet you like to do both. In fact I LOVE to do both. I started traveling at a very young age. I use to collect pop/soda cans, return them for cash and put the money towards traveling. Well, okay in the early stages it was for camp, however when I turned 12 I had an opportunity to travel to Peru in South America for a month. The deal was that I would save the money for the flight and the rest of my expenses were covered. I got the travel bug right then and there. On that trip I took several photos. Now remember this was long before digital so I was mindful of not being to snap happy. With one of the best inventions … digital, we can all be as snap happy as we like. I wonder what will be next in the camera world. 🙂
Check out this short video on how to organize travel photos and then read the quick easy Getting it Together top 5 tips.
Tip#1: Volume. I hear of people that go on a trip and take 4000 photos.WOW! That is a lot of photos to try and manage. Even more to look at and even more to organize. Be mindful of the number of pictures you take. How many photos do you need of the Pyramids? I know it is easy to get caught up in the excitement of being in a country and wanting to capture all of the fun times there.
Tip#2: Organize as you go. When I travel I love sitting down at the end of the day and looking at my photos from that day. I delete any of the not so good ones or duplicates. The one thing I find with digital cameras is that you cannot always see what you are taking photos of. If it is really bright or sunny my view screen goes black. I would say that is the only downfall with my camera. How do you handle this? Please leave a comment in the box below.
Tip#3: Right away. Within the first week of being home, download your photos. Make sure you give each trip a “folder” that is properly labeled. For example “Egypt October 2010”. Be sure to back up your computer. I also put all my photos on Facebook. What I love about Facebook is that I can write comments beside each photo. I can also access my photos from anywhere in the world.
Tip#4: To print or not to print. Do not print because of fear. Print because of pleasure. I meet people all the time that print off hundreds of travel photos in fear that their computer will crash, get stolen or something like that. This is not the right reason to print photos. If you back up your computer you will always have access to them. Print your travel photos only if you are the type of person who likes to make a memory photo album for your own pleasure. These photo albums are your memories and not anyone else’s. That means that probably no one else will ever want your albums when you are gone. Ya, your kids might flip through them, but those are your memories and they have their own travel memories.
Tip#5: Take time. Did you know the average person takes only 7 minutes to look at their travel photos? Once or twice a year grab yourself a nice cup of tea and sit with your travel photos. Flip through your computer or hard copy photo albums. Relive the happy memories of those trips. Better yet, put some of your favorite photos up as a screen saver slide show.
Safe travels. I hope our paths cross somewhere out there in this old world.
Hi Rowena, Thank you for your great tips on photo organization. I am one of those people who takes hundreds of digital photos when we travel. I review them each day of the trip and delete some, but still end up with way too many. I now set up my work and home computer screen savers and wallpapers to scroll my recent trip photos. This way I can enjoy them everyday and see which ones can be deleted. When I then go through the photos for archiving, I know I can delete most of them.
Printed photos – my sister-in-law has a method I like. She dumps a box of photos on the table each week and when she has a few minutes, she quickly goes through them, tossing all the meaningless ones. What is left she just puts in photo albums in no particular order. She says this way it is more interesting for others to look at and generates more conversation. Instead of endless photos of the dog at Christmas, she has old and new photos mixed together so it is not boring. And because they are on the dining room table, she has to get to it before company comes!
Thank You for sharing your great ideas.
Who is going to try this?