What Now, Using the Best of the Bunch

Ann — Mon, 06 May 2013 06:00:00 +0000

I’m a strong believer in living with our photos. By that I mean, take them off of the computer or memory stick, and find a way that the whole family can enjoy them easily.

This three-part series is going to offer tips on how to choose from the hundreds (or thousands) of pictures taken on a single trip and turn them into a beautiful souvenir that your family will enjoy for years.

(Note in this post I reference various services and products that I am using. These brands are not sponsored, nor affiliated in any way with Travel Turtle. They are just products that I have used and enjoyed.)

Let’s Review

In part 1 of this series we eliminated duplicate and blurry photos. We grouped the photos into smaller themes and from those themes we selected a few of our favorite photos. I am participating with this series using a group of photos I took from a 2011 trip to Paris. I started with roughly 400 photos and by the end of this part, I had around 200 photos.

In part 2, we created albums and slide shows. This made it easy to share a majority of our photos with family and friends. I created a photo book with Shutterfly that used most of the 200 photos from part 1.

Now I want to share ways to take our absolute favorite photos to create smaller displays for our family to enjoy.

Part 3: Ways to Display the Best Photos from Family Trips

Slideshows, large photo books and even digital frames are a nice ways to store a large group of photos. However, sometimes smaller photo collections have more impact. These smaller collections can be displayed on walls or little books that are easy for our children and family to enjoy. They can be viewed at any time without needing to be set up. Here we will look at two ways to display and create a curated collection of our photos from a single trip.

Wall Art

As I mentioned, in part 1 of this series we selected a few of our favorite photos. We will use those favorites for the pictures we want to use in our photo wall display. There are many different types of photo walls, and I scoured the web for a few options. Because the theme of this series is to keep everything simple so that we actually do something with our photos, my criteria for selecting photo wall inspiration was to look for something: easy to assemble, change when necessary, child friendly and budget friendly. The bonus, they look great on our walls! The inspiration I found is on Pinterest (you do not need to be a member to view the board). I will add to the board through time, so please follow the board or bookmark the page. Travel Memory Ideas Photo Wall

Now that we have some inspiration for our walls, let’s print the photos.

Wait! We have a few decisions to make first.

Color vs. black and white – Take a look at all the photos you want to display and ask yourself the following questions:

Do the photos have one consistent color tone throughout?
Are the photos simple images without a lot of clutter in the background?
Do you like color photos?

If you answered “no” to any of those questions, you may want to consider going with black and white photos. However, if you still prefer color photos, then do it! Or do a combination of both. They’re your photos and you can do what you want.

Editing photos – Again, editing is up to you. However, if you want a more polished look to your photos, it doesn’t hurt to spend a few minutes editing them. If you noticed that your favorite photos do not have a consistent color tone, you can use filters to achieve a uniform look. If you feel that the photos are busy, crop them. Here is a sample of three photos from our trip. The first group is before I applied filters, the second was after I applied the Saloman filter on Photogramio. They now look similar even though each was taken at a different time of the day.

Without filter:

With “saloman” filter:

These examples are just to show how filters can easily give a more uniform look, but they aren’t necessary. Remember, the idea here is to keep things as simple as possible so that it gets done.

If you choose a wall display that has different sized photos, the last thing you will want to consider is which photos should be larger. Ask yourself, what is the goal in displaying these photos? Are you more interested in showing your photography skills? In that case, a perfectly composed photo of a building, landscape or something else may be the preferred large photo. Do you want to showcase your children and where they’ve been? Then the posed photo of them in front of a statue or building may get top billing. Do you want to show your family having fun? Then maybe a candid photo of family members laughing or engaging in their location will get the honors.

Kids Story Books

Kids love to look at pictures of themselves. In part 2 of this series, I suggested creating a photo book through a service like Shutterfly and then purchasing two copies of the book. One for you and one for your kids. However, this can get expensive. Plus, some kids just are not as interested in looking through 200+ photos of a single trip often. Instead, make a photo album. It’s cheap, easy, and fun. Also, by selecting just a small portion of our hundreds of photos we can tell a story children will enjoy reading over and over again.

This is what I did: I recently went to my local photo printing kiosk and printed out 40 photos from our trip to Paris. I wanted a nice variety of photos of our family, and my son, with iconic images of Paris in the background and sometimes just the buildings and statues themselves. While my photos printed, I picked up a photo album that allowed for one 4×6 photo per page, and a total of 36 photos. To keep my son involved in the process, he came with me to print the photos and pushed all the buttons on the touch screen monitor. All the photos and album cost less than 15 Euros/20 USD. When I got home, I put the photos in the album in a way that told the story of his first trip to Paris. I also added a photo of the three of us to the cover and titled the book “Paris: 2011”. It instantly became his favorite book. He loves looking at the pictures of him in front of buildings, pointing out Pluto (we went to Disneyland Paris while we were there) and saying “Mommy” and “Daddy” when we are in the picture.

Here are some tips for you if you want to make a similar album:

If chronological order makes sense, do that, but don’t feel confined to the order of the trip. I had a photo of my son eating a baguette on the last day of our trip. However, it made more sense to be at the beginning of the book where I would have had a blank page to introduce a new section. Move things around to tell a better story.
Keep horizontal pictures next to horizontal pictures, and vertical pictures next to vertical ones.
If your photo album has more spaces than you have photos, use the extra pages to write details of your trip. Dates, places you went, and stories that your children will enjoy reading.
Use office labels to add text to the photos that could use a little more details. Especially if your kids are old enough to read, writing “Notre Dame” next to the photo of the “Notre Dame” and “Sacre Couer” next to the “Sacre Couer” will help them recognize the names and differentiate the different buildings.
Give the book to your children and include it in their evening bedtime routine. Use the photos to tell the story of their trip to Paris, winging it and changing it up a little each time. Or use labels and empty pages to write the story of their trip so anyone looking at the album with them can read the same story.
If you want to go back to the place don’t end your story book with “The End”. Instead, use “and they couldn’t wait to go back!”

Now that you have a few options on turning your large collection of photos into something that your family can look at over and over again, go ahead and make something with one of your trips. Share with me if you make anything from these ideas and I will share them here.

Thank you so much for following along!

This post is part of Friday Daydreamin’ at RWeThereYet. Click on the link to see what other bloggers favorite posts of the week.

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organizing photos – Travel Turtle

What Now, Using the Best of the Bunch

Let’s Review

Part 3: Ways to Display the Best Photos from Family Trips

Wall Art

Kids Story Books