Organize Your Travel Photos Like a Pro
For Spring Break this year, my family traveled to Utah for the week and visited five National Parks over five days. Because we traveled for a total of six days, I took close to 1,000 different photos. While we were on our trip, I reduced this number to 500. After a second round of deleting photos, I kept less than 250 photos.
When you love to take photos, it can be overwhelming to sort through and figure out what is important to keep. There are several steps that I take while traveling and when I get home from a trip to help reduce the number of photos in my camera roll.
What I do during a trip and soon after we return home:
Delete:
This is something that I do daily. It is so much easier to delete photos as you go, rather than save blurry or accidental photos. If you keep all of these images until the end of the trip, you will get overwhelmed by the sheer number of images you need to sort through. I like using Daily Delete for this step. It takes the stress out of decluttering your camera roll.
- Almost duplicates
- Accidental shots (the ground/your chin/etc.)
- Bad photos (blurry/closed eyes)
- PROMO CODE – HOPE20
Edit:
I don’t do this step often, but I like removing distracting details from the background when I really like the photo. I will edit my photos once after a big trip by cropping, adjusting lighting, or removing the live photo feature.
- Remove photo bombers: If you have an updated iPhone, you can complete this step in the Photos app. For Android users, you can edit out unwanted individuals in the background using Google Photos.
- Crop
- Turn off live photos or portraits
Share:
I like to take a few moments throughout the week to share special photos with friends and family members, especially the grandparents. When I return from a trip, I take some time to add to my digital frames. We love adding our memories to Nixplay.
- I check Google Photos for my husband’s photos as we use partner sharing and I add a few to my camera roll.
- Send a photo/video to the grandparents
- Add photos to digital frames. (maybe in our home or family frames that we also add photos to)
Create & Display:
I love finding new ways to highlight the special memories created on our family trips. I create a photo book, frame my favorites, and display souvenirs around the house.
- I create a 1-second everyday video for each day of the trip, then a longer video for the entire trip. Live photos are a great option for creating short videos, without having to take a separate video.
- My family loves watching these videos on Projector.
- You can also create photo books, albums, and souvenirs out of the best photos from your trip.
Backup:
You never know what will happen to your devices on a trip. If you drop your phone in a puddle of water, or down a hill, you don’t want to lose all of these images. I have found iCloud, pCloud, and Dropbox to be the most effective for automatic backup. This is a step I take daily so that my photos are always safe and secure.
- This can be challenging when there is no connection
- Double-check that my iCloud is syncing
- Verify that my pCloud is auto-uploading
- Open my Dropbox account to upload the photos and I want to eventually go into my memories hub
Facial Recognition/Metadata:
I use Adobe Lightroom to automatically recognize and label faces, but there are a wide variety of platforms that can be used to add this information. I do this step when I get back from a large trip after I have reduced the number of images in my camera roll.
- Makes my Memories Hub easy to search in the future
- Facial recognition
- Add keywords
If you need help creating a custom photo album or decluttering your memories, schedule a free 20-minute consultation with Lisa.
Great tips! Organizing travel photos can feel overwhelming, so having a clear method to follow is super helpful. Definitely will be sharing these with my clients, thank you!