How to Organize Vacation Photos to Tell a Complete Story
This is the start of our recent trip to Alaska. Here’s why this type of ‘reference photo’ is so important when you want to curate a complete visual story of your vacation.
After a family vacation, I always like to go through my photos and pick out the very best ones. Actually… the best few. (And that’s usually harder to do than you might think.) They’re the ones that really tell the story. And I’m talking under 40-50 pictures.
If you’ve tried a similar exercise, you know what a challenge this can be. Sure, creating a photo book with hundreds of your vacation photos doesn’t require you to choose from all your darlings. But if you’re going to simply show off your photos from your phone to family and friends, their eyes will quickly glaze over after only a dozen of your finger flips.
You’ve got to keep your presentation short. And you should choose the pics that go well together and represent the total arc your trip.
Ideally, they should also visually represent the key information about your travels. Sure, you can audibly fill in the details through a little voice-over support as you share your pictures in the moment. But I think the best collections of family travel photography don’t require that. The photos should stand on their own.
The 3 Categories of Vacation Photos
To create the best collection of vacation photos, you’ll need to take and include three types of shots.
#1 – The Money Shots
It’s obvious that you’ll want to show off your ‘money shots.’ These are your best photos of the ‘place’ you’ve visited. Whether it’s the natural beauty of the wild or a famous urban landscape, those are the photos that anchor your entire trip.
#2 – Your Selfies
And then we all know to snap some selfies along the way (or ask a friendly tourist to take a posed shot of you and your family). You’ve got to include a few of those shots in your collection, right? That’s what makes it your trip.
#3 – Reference Shots
This third category isn’t intuitive, and you’re not going to realize you really need them until you try to put your collection together. I call them reference shots. Think of them as the thread that stitches your whole photo story together. In many ways they’re like an establishing shot in a movie.
These shots provide the context you’ll want for your other photos.
The Boat
For example, on my family’s recent vacation to Alaska, we went on an amazing day cruise on Prince William Sound to get up close and personal with a few glaciers. It was incredible. So sure, I got tons of shots of the glaciers and some shots of my family posing in front of the glaciers. But I almost forgot to get a shot of the boat we were on.
The boat was really a big part of the story… We were on Prince William Sound… and cruised right up to a glacier… and there we are… on this boat. It’s so important to complete the visual sentence.
The Trailhead Marker
Another example: We took the hike of a lifetime right next to Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park up the Harding Icefield Trail.
The money shots were a couple hours away up the trail, but I intentionally dragged my feet at the beginning of our hike to let everyone in our Backroads group walk ahead of me as I shot the trailhead marker that contained the key details.
The Name of the Place
Ideally, it’s great to find a shot that includes the actual name of your location. That’s so helpful, especially as an opening shot for your visual story.
I found my ‘Alaska’ shot spontaneously as we were biking the Bird to Gird path along the Turnagain Arm. Suddenly an Alaska Railroad train roared by. I braked, grabbed my camera from my belly bag and snapped my photo!
Set Up your Visual Story
These reference shots are easy to forget. But they’re the glue to help group together all your other photos and represent a complete story.
In the same way that any written story has a beginning, middle and end, so should your collection of vacation photos.
Whether you think of them as ‘reference’ or ‘set up’ or ‘establishing’ shots, just a few of them can serve this need exceptionally well. You just have to be mindful to find them along the way.
Don’t Dilly Dally
And if your traveling companions glance at you quizzically the next time you take an extra few beats to snap one of these shots, just remember the value they represent.
Even through you might then have to hoof it to catch up to the rest of your group (guilty), it’s worth it.
Just don’t take too long. Otherwise you’ll risk falling too far behind your own story!
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