Travel: getting the most from your best pictures

When I return from a trip and have my hundreds to thousands of pictures, it is always a slog to go through them all. But when I am done I have 2 main outputs that I always enjoy and can share with others.

The first step of this process is downloading all the pictures from my phone, camera, and GoPro.  Super easy (assuming I’ve remembered to set the date/time on each, which isn’t always true).

After that, it takes a while to sort the pictures and videos into folders. I separate things by country, and within that by city, and then within each city, I have folders for different attractions if there are a lot of pictures. In many cities and countries, I also have leftover folders for things like “food”  or “shopping” or “around town” . This is to catch the pictures that don’t fit into other categories. Plus, it often makes more sense to put all of those types of pictures together rather than separate them by location.

Next, I go through the folders one by one marking which photos are the best and which deleting those that should be deleted (if not deleted at the last step bc of being blurry or otherwise un-sortable).

How to display

Then that list of best pictures goes to the two main projects: a Shutterfly album and my digital picture frames.

Shutterfly book

They you can upload the best pictures to Shutterfly to make a book out of them. Since you’ve already sorted them into folders so you can just load them into the folders and then onto pages and name them as you’ve already done all the processing in your files.  This is great to bring to work, or family gatherings, etc.  If somehow it gets lost or damaged, you can just print another one easily. Just wait for a good coupon.

Digital Photo Frames

Then, the pictures get sorted by whether they portrait or landscape pictures, and then are loaded onto one of my digital photo frames. I have one at home for both horizontal and landscape, and another at work which shows all of them. Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

I really like the Nix Advance picture frames that are motion-activated, so you don’t have to bother setting a timer or anything. They are nicely bright (and adjustable) and viewable from a wide-angle. They look like this (click the pic for more info about them). They come in sizes from 8″ (good for at a desk or such) to 15″ (good anywhere something that big will fit).

Consider which aspect ratio you want based on which pictures you’ll be displaying. If you mostly take pictures on your phone, your pictures will most likely be widescreen.  If you take pictures with a camera, your pictures will most likely be a standard screen.

For example, if all your pictures will be in widescreen landscape (or portrait) because you take most of your pictures with a phone, then get a screen that shape, but if some will be widescreen portrait (or landscape), they will be super-compressed in on a widescreen horizontal (or vertical) frame.  This is why I have 2 frames at home (one landscape and one portrait).  Before going that route make sure the frame can stand up for portrait photos (and has a balanced frame width so it doesn’t look funny as many have a thicker bottom which would then be the side.

If you’ve got both portrait and landscape pictures in both widescreen and regular format, I find the ones with the regular shape (like the above) work best.  I wish there were square ones, but I’ve never seen one like that, as that would be the best shape if you’ve got all the different formats and sizes.