Before digitalisation, one popular way of enjoying and sharing travel memories was to print the photos and compile them in physical albums. Photo / 123rf
Before digitalisation, one popular way of enjoying and sharing travel memories was to print the photos and compile them in physical albums. Photo / 123rf
Q: We’ve just come back from four weeks overseas with north of 1500 photos. Any tips for storing and sorting them?
A: You’ve come straight to the wrong person. I opened a folder of 250-plus digital photos marked “South Africa 2016″ the other day and realised that was 150 images of somewhere west of Heavensknowswhere in Australia some other time.
But you’ve hit on the modern traveller’s ethical dilemma (well, apart from carbon footprints, over-tourism and bistro rip-offs). We all tootle around, snapping at any and everything we see with our phones.
One of the most effective and enjoyable ways of sorting and storing photos is old-school: print out the highlights and paste them in an album, if you can find a stationery shop to sell you one.
That does imply some carnage of trees and whatever they put in printing ink, so you should embrace digital technology. Quickest and simplest way to show ‘em off: copy the best shots on to a USB, plug it into your smart TV or laptop, and then follow the instructions to set your photos playing on a loop on-screen.
Make sure the date and time are set correctly on your phone/camera. Photo / Sebastien Gabriel; Unsplash
(Share those magic moments by buying a flagon of cheap sherry, some tasty cheddar and crackers, and inviting the neighbours over for an evening’s viewing. That was quite common entertainment in Kiwi suburbs during the 60s and 70s. My Uncle John used to show 35mm Kodachrome images from his overseas trips at what were called “slide evenings”, and before your mind goes anywhere with that, he was the vicar of Point Chev.)
In truth, storing and sorting your photos begins before you take a shot. Make sure the date and time are set correctly on your phone/camera. Your photos will always be tagged with the correct date, and this will make them a lot easier to sort later.
When you get home, go through the photos and videos and delete all the dark and blurry ones, the ones where the strap of your phone case has strayed into the picture, and the ones that don’t stack up artistically or as mementoes. That’ll help to keep your collection down to a manageable size (yes, this paragraph is a stern Note to Self for opportunities missed).
Don’t even think about cropping or editing your photos at this stage. That will add days, weeks or even months to the process. For now, you just want to streamline the collection to those that are worth keeping. Be brutal!
A good practice is to organise digital travel photos by location rather than by date. Photo / 123rf
Clearly, best practice is to do this after each trip, and not leave it until you’re wading through the morass of several decades’ travels and many more stamps in your passport. (Yes, another stern Note to …)
I’d suggest organising your digital travel photos in folders within folders under the location, not the date. Try this formula: start with the continent, then add a sub-folder for each country or region, another for cities – or, maybe, experiences.
Let’s say your recent trip was to Europe. Make a Europe folder; then create sub-folders for France, Italy and Spain. Within France, create another sub-folder for Paris and one for Provence; for Italy, one for Rome, another for Florence/Tuscany, and so on. You get the picture. Well, the appropriate sub-folder does.
You’ve invested thousands in the trip, so you’ll want to make sure you’re preserving the memories, so your next step is to choose how you want to back up your photos and videos. Yes, you are already storing them on a hard drive of some sort – on your phone or your computer – but to be safe you need a duplicate copy of that drive in case that computer or phone falls over.
There are plenty of easy-to-use options, none of them very expensive. I use an external drive that plugs into my phone/tablet/computer and apparently has a gazillion terrabytes (no, I don’t know either) of safe storage; other folks prefer a low-cost subscription to an online platform like Dropbox, Google Drive or iCloud.
Backing up travel photos is essential, and options range from external drives with massive storage capacities to online platforms like Dropbox, Google Drive, or iCloud. Photo / 123rf
However you choose to sort and store them, the main purpose of those photos is to be picked up and leafed through and to bring back – hopefully – happy memories. Go online and you’ll find virtually unlimited ways to display them.
You can print paper copies and create your own coffee-table album (earlier caveats apply), frame some of the best for your walls, or assemble them into a digital photo album. There are dozens of reputable sites that will take on that task for you.
If you have a particular favourite or two, you can have them embossed on a coffee mug, fridge magnet or T-shirt. I’d give the slide evening the flick, though.
