Did you ever have to write that “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” essay? I don’t know if it’s still required, but historically, it’s one of the first assignments given to students upon their return to school. It’s a great exercise to help students develop writing and communication skills, foster creativity around storytelling and help children organize their thoughts and ideas into something both structured and comprehensible.
The same can apply to photos you’ve taken during the summer. Whether you did extensive traveling or just enjoyed a “staycation” with family and friends, you want to organize your photos for ease and accessibility whether it’s on your personal storage device or on your social networks.
Here are some quick tips to help you create a compelling photo album that is fun, creative and answers the question – What I Did on My Summer Vacation.
Make a Photo Book – Select the best of your photos and create a photo book with the help of a site like Blurb. Make a wedding album or a coffee table book on your trip to Disneyland.
Implement a Theme – “Girls Night Out”, “Good Eatin’” or “Fun with Friends” are all common themes for collecting photos about a particular event or experience. It makes pictures easy to find and can tell a great story about how you spent a particular day.
Create a Timeline – No, not the Facebook timeline, but still the same concept. Use your photos to tell an event whether it’s going to a sporting event or music festival from beginning to end. This is an opportunity to let the viewer experience what you experienced. Share the memory.
Develop a Map – Use a site like uEncounter or Pinmaps to highlight where you’ve been (or even where you want to go). Virtual maps are a great way to share experiences with people who’ve been to a similar location and make new friends.
Folders, Tags & Keywords, Oh My! – Why organize? So you can have easy access to your pictures, right? Well that’s where creating descriptive folders, relevant tags and custom keywords come in. Make sure that what you are categorizing will be easy to find and accurate. A folder called My Pictures from June will force you to open it to see what’s inside versus a folder called Mike’s Birthday Bash in L.A. Then you can use keywords like “events” or “celebration” and tags like “Mike” to make your photos easier to access regardless of where you store them.
Plan an Excursion – It’s not too late to get away for the remainder of summer. The goal is to plan a trip based upon what you’d like to take photos of. If you want beautiful landscapes, sunsets and beaches, plan a trip to a local campgrounds or beach. Want something to showcase thrills and excitement, plan a trip to Magic Mountain. The purpose is to already have a sense of what you will shoot before you shoot it making the idea of organizing it that much easier.
Want to hear an organization tip from a pro? Let’s see what Florida based photographer, Melissa Alicia, has to say about how she handles photo organization.
Obviously when photography is your full-time job, you develop processes and techniques that will help you select the highest quality photos and keep your sets both organized and accessible. I like to leverage Lightroom – a software program that provides tools for photography production and organization. For me, the beauty of using Lightroom is that is has plugins to export to various different photo sharing websites. You can upload a whole collection as an album to Flickr, SmugMug, Facebook, Picasa, Zenfolio, Shutterfly, and more.
Here’s a quick breakdown of my process while in Lightroom:
Create a New Catalog
You can name it Summer 2012, and use this subsequently for every year (e.g. Summer 2013, Sumer 2014, etc.)
Import Photos in Date Named Folders within your Summer 2012 Catalog
This way if you ever need to move your summer catalog everything is together
Keywords
With every import, enter keywords for your photographs. This way you can easily search within the library for specific photographs.
Use Collections
Make collections of photos you want to group together (like Anne’s birthday party, or Cross Country Adventure!).
Photos help capture an experience or relive a memory. Memories should be shared. Can you think of a better way to share a memory, to tell a story, to personalize an experience than by sharing your summer photos?
Speaking of photos, don’t forget our “New Life. New Drive” photo contest happening right now! Submit your summer photo for a chance to win an HP ENVY TouchSmart laptop (with 1TB Seagate SSHD inside), a Fujifilm X20 Silver 12 Digital Camera, a 500GB Seagate Slim, and a 1TB Seagate Wireless Plus. It’s the perfect package to send you back to school in style.
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