Preparing to Capture Your Disney Vacation: Prep What You Can
So, here I am, less than two weeks from my next Disney vacation. Today I wanted to share the final installment in my Preparing to Capture Your Disney Vacation series. In the first post, we talked about choosing the right tools. After that, we talked about planning your approach and then about gathering your supplies. The last step in preparing to capture your Disney vacation is to prep what you can.
In everyday life, we do this all the time. You pick out and iron your clothes on Sunday for the week. Maybe you pack lunches the night before they need to get onto the school bus. For a dinner party, you may make the salad and dessert before hand. We take advantage of the time we have to get things ready so we won’t feel so rushed in the moment. I try to take this idea and apply to my special albums. What can I do now that will make putting the album together easier?
- Set up a system for downloading and organizing your photos – A mess of photos is the first thing that could deter you from getting this album done. Before you go on your trip, take some time to figure out how you will upload your photos, and how you will organize them in your specific program or in folders on your computer. Setting up those filters and/or photos prior to the trip makes life easier when you get home.
- Set up your templates – If you are using templates (I highly recommend it for getting a project like this done), take the time to set them up in the manner you chose to scrap your vacation. So maybe you save a template per day, or a template per park, however you plan on organizing your memories. I take the time and pick the template, open it up, put in any pieces that I know will definitely go on the page (maybe a title card that goes on every page), and then save the template with the according file name.
- Put all of your supplies in one space – On my computer, I have a special folder called WIP, short for Works in Progress. That’s where I keep all of the projects I am currently working on. Before I leave for my trip, I create a folder for the trip, and I put all of the supplies I think I am going to use in that folder, along with the templates I set up, and often even the fonts I want to use. This way, when I’m ready to start putting this album together, everything is in one central location.
- Set up a journal and/or a journaling app – I go back and forth between paper and app versions, but you should set up a place to take notes from each day of your trip. That will make a world of difference when you are going back to journal the trip. Maybe you dedicate a day per page of your physical journal, or you set up separate notes in Evernote, or use a daily journaling app. One thing I am always sure to include is a list of potential pictures I want to take on my trip. What planned pictures will I want to have? Writing them down helps me make sure I get those shots.
These are the main things that I do to prep for when I get back and want to scrap my Disney vacation. Now, I’ve got everything ready to go and enjoy my vacation, and I have a definite plan of how I am going to get this album done when I get back. Awesome.
