With Spring Break upon us, documenting your travel and vacation memories may be on your mind.  Not surprisingly, I love the photo book for vacations.  I made my first big vacation book  in 2006 and haven’t looked back since.  Last year, our family took the trip of a lifetime over Spring Break – traveling with both my family and my husband’s family to London and Ireland.  11 people + 14 days = many wonderful pictures and memories.

Here are a few quick lessons learned from documenting this and other trips…

1.  Take a few minutes each night or during the drive/flight home to record your favorite memories from the trip.  Ask your family their top 3 favorite moments.  You might get answers such as “seeing the tumbleweeds on the highway (I5)” as their favorite thing about your Disneyland trip.  Those inside jokes and funny stories quickly fade from my mind if I don’t write them down nightly or at the end of the vacation.

2.  If traveling with a group, don’t be shy about asking to grab the photos from their cameras.  For iPad users, the iPad camera connection kit is a great way to do this on the go.

3.  Photograph the details of where you are (park sign, landmarks) to help you remember the order of your days.  “Place” pictures such as this also allow you to tell the story of your day without needing to add any additional text to your photo book/album.

4.  Along the same lines, another great idea is to photograph a “virtual bookmark” like this:

source

5.  Pack a manilla envelope/large Ziploc/cute bag to tuck and save memorabilia that you collect throughout your trip.  You may decide to scan these or tuck into an album at some point. Or maybe they will just got tossed when you get home and you have more perspective about what was really important about your trip.  But having a place to put these things so they are not floating around your bags is helpful.

6.  Lastly, don’t forget to hand the camera off to someone else once in a a while so they can take your picture, too.

Happy travels!