How to organize your travel photos before you even get home

By Chris Guld, Geeks on Tour We are currently traveling in New Zealand and taking lots of pictures! I’ve taken about 1200 pictures so far, and Jim has probably taken nearly the same. How would you like to see a slide show? I think not! But, here’s our trip album with just our selected photos – just click this link to view the album. The conventional method of photo organizing teaches to:

• Keep the best
• Delete the rest

But, I am way too lazy! Deciding which pictures need to be deleted is both time-taking and stressful. That sounds like work to me. I avoid work! I will certainly delete the obvious garbage – the mistakes when my phone took a photo of the inside of my pocket, or my foot, but, at the Hobbiton movie set yesterday, everywhere we turned was a beautiful image. Our phones take great pictures, and Google Photos stores them in the cloud, unlimited and free, so why not take every picture you see. I am not the best photographer, but if I take enough – I’m bound to catch a good one here and there! Here is what my phone’s Google Photos screen looked like yesterday:

I can’t delete any of those! But, I can pick out 3 or 4 representative shots to put in our New Zealand trip album, so that’s what I do. My method is:

• Keep them all
• Pick a few for the album and add them

That’s easy; actually, it’s fun. I can even accomplish that, using my phone, on the tour bus on the way back to the RV! I love looking at the pictures I just took, adding a few of them to the trip album is as easy as tapping the 3-dot menu, selecting Add to Album, and tapping the New Zealand album. Before I go to bed at night, my friends and family are all able to see the wonderful things we did that day by viewing the album.

I cringe when I hear people say, “I took so many pictures on my vacation, now I have to spend a few days deleting and organizing them once I get home.” How many people never get around to that? That’s work. What a shame. Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She and her husband, Jim, produce a free weekly YouTube show called What Does This Button Do?  They have been Fulltime RVers, popular seminar presenters at RV Rallies, and regular contributors to RVTravel.com, for many years.