You burned through a memory card and drained your phone’s battery daily taking snapshots and selfies on your Disney trip. Now you’re home, and all of those pictures are digitally available to you. Here’s how you can preserve and enjoy your photos after your trip.
1. Collect everything. Start a file on your main computer and download your memory card(s). Ask each person who shot photos to share them with you via email, USB drive, or Dropbox and add those photos to the master file. Sign into your PhotoPass account to be sure you can view all of your pictures.
2. Thin the herd. Although we now have the ability to save every megabyte of data, it doesn’t mean we should. Delete the blurry snaps. Pick the best shot from a series of photos. Deftly remove any that make you look too Goofy!
3. Back it up. If your computer crashed, what would happen to these Disney vacation photos, and all of the photos you’ve taken over the years? It would make you cry if that happened. Don’t ask me how I know. It’s wise to have a non-connected duplicate, whether it’s a cloud-based account or an external drive.
One Photopass picture, raw and with two different borders
4. Edit. You don’t need to be a Photoshop wizard, but harness your computer’s software and filters to make the most of your photos. Crop in tighter. Make a horizontal shot a gorgeous slim vertical. See if that dark shot can be salvaged with a little processing. Add borders to your Photopass pictures, but don’t forget you have a 30-day deadline to edit and order your photos.
The back of this childhood photo of me says “Grumpy and friend” in my father’s precise engineer’s printing. I’m still not sure which one of us he was calling what, but I treasure the description almost as much as the photo.
5. Label yourself. Write captions or descriptions for your photos. Why was that picture so funny or what “Disney first” did it represent? Who did you run into? You won’t remember a year from now.
6. Be social-media savvy. Boring your relatives with a slideshow has been replaced with oversharing on social media. Consider where the line is between “we had an awesome vacation” and bragging. Maybe it’s enough to have a couple of family shots for Instagram, a small album for Facebook, and reserving the mass of the photos for a personal blog or Disney trip report for those who want every last detail.
7. Gather the leftovers. Hunt down park maps, tickets, napkins, celebration buttons, pins, etc. and keep them in one place. Right now they seem like trash, but you might want them later for crafts (or they might even become valuable!)
8. Bring your photos to life! This is the most important step. Take your photos out of digital limbo and use them! Make collage frames (above) or shadowboxes. Download them to your tablet or phone to swipe through — my children love doing this. Use a favorite picture as your screensaver. Make albums of photos and give them as gifts to your vacation companions. The possibilities are endless.
Searching ” photo craft” on Pinterest will give you thousands of ideas to preserve and display your trip memories
We hope you enjoy your photos after your trip! How do you make your trip photos part of your life?