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tkradtke

tkradtke

Professional Brainstormer
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Dec 28, 2009
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Any tips out there for keeping on track with PL while on/after returning from a vacation?

This summer is a strange one for us. It's a summer of many trips. We have one in particular coming up that's concerning me in regards to PL. We will be gone for a little over two weeks on a "fun family road trip" across the US to Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, etc (my mom is planning the trip so I'm not privy to the full itinerary yet). I will take a ton of photos which is overwhelming by itself.... but add to that the fact that I will return nearly three weeks behind with PL and will probably stay that way for a while with settling back in and all of the laundry :dizzy I have real tendency to want to quit when I get behind, so I need to have a plan so I won't.

What I'm considering:

1. I'm considering taking my laptop with me, but I'm not sure I want to add more stuff to the car.

2. As of right now, I have decided that my plan is to give each day it's own one page layout in my PL book. That way I don't have to stress about how to break things up.

3. My daughter and I plan on doing travel journal smash books during the trip. We were doing this just for fun and a way to pass some of the nights in hotels, waiting at restaurants, in the car, etc. But now I think they'll be a good way to help with my PL journaling when we get home.

4. If I take my laptop, I think I should plan on downloading photos each night with a separate folder for each day (I usually do one folder per month), because I'm sure everything will blur together when we get home.

I am totally open to any ideas you might have!

Thanks!
 
I would consider using an app on your phone (like Evernote) or take along a paper journal, just to jot notes down during the day about what you did that day. That will make it sooo much easier to go back and journal about your trip when you get home, even if you take your laptop with you this would be handy to have. It's really easy for days to run together on a trip like this and if you have something you want to document that you might not have pics for (like something somebody said or an encounter you may have had) it's a really easy way to remember when exactly it happened.
 
We made a trip last year that was jam packed with seeing people that we had not seen for a long time. I ended up doing a variety of things. I made sure I took snapshots of all the people and all the fun :). I made my normal two page PL spread, but then did several inserts. Some of them were just page protectors with printed photos and I added a couple of journaling cards. Then, I also did a couple of just collage type layouts. I think the travel smash books sound like lots of fun and a great way to get your daughter involved!
 
I would do a separate travel album. Maybe you can add photos to your smashbooks once you get home? If you are already doing that work while on the trip, it seems like a lot more additional work to duplicate it in your PL album.

I would only do one two page spread of my absolute favorite photos from the trip in the actual PL album and reference some place on the page that there's a separate album.

If it was a simple weekend trip, a visit from relatives, etc. I would have the entire trip covered in PL, but with something this extensive, I would give it its own album.
 
I've been giving this some thought as well, since our vacation trip is coming up (plus I have last year's and the year before that to 'catch up' on still). I've been using a year planner that you can buy off the shelf at any office store. It has a monthly calendar for each month, and then a 2-page spread with a little rectangle of space for each day. That's what I've been using to jot down notes for each day. I think I'll take that with me to make notes. That way when I look back through my photos, the notes can help fill in the gaps.

As for presentation, I believe my plan is to include a regular week spread in my PL album with just a few of my fave snapshots, and maybe some fun notes about the week. Beyond that, I will do a separate vacation album. In there, I won't feel like I have to limit or down-size my quantity or sizes of photos. Maybe do photo page spreads, some regular scrapbook pages, collage pages, whatever. Just get it all into one vacation album and print that separately.
 
LeeAndra said:
I would do a separate travel album. Maybe you can add photos to your smashbooks once you get home? If you are already doing that work while on the trip, it seems like a lot more additional work to duplicate it in your PL album.

I would only do one two page spread of my absolute favorite photos from the trip in the actual PL album and reference some place on the page that there's a separate album.

If it was a simple weekend trip, a visit from relatives, etc. I would have the entire trip covered in PL, but with something this extensive, I would give it its own album.
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:giggle
I must have been writing mine while you were posting yours.... great minds!! :)
 
Thanks so much for talking me through this!! I think my plan is beginning to come together.

Okay... the revised plan...

1. I think I'll leave the laptop at home. One less thing to keep track of and worry about.

2. Thanks to your suggestions, Rebecca and LeAndra, I'm ditching the one page per day plan. That's just a recipe for getting crazy behind once we're back. I will just do my regular weekly spread with just my favorite photos. I was just having a hard time reconciling having only one page per week of this amazing trip when I managed to have 6 pages for our trip to visit my parents over spring break. But that's because those photos really aren't going to be anywhere else, so it makes sense to have the extra pages in my PL book. My plan all along was to do a separate trip album once we were back... that's where all of my photos will go. I'll do that digitally, so I can print multiple copies... one for us and one for my parents (who are on this trip too) to give to them as a Christmas present.

The smash books are really more of an activity for my daughter and I (trying to unplug a bit more this trip) and a way to jot down journaling stuff for my album later. I'm really looking forward to doing them! Also, being digital, they'll be a way to reign in all of the paper bits from our trip.

Strange question here... on a big long trip, has anyone shot divider photos between days? I was thinking, since I'm making the commitment now to unplug and not bring my laptop, that I would possibly need a way to keep my days separate on my memory card to make organizing photos easier once we're back. Would it be crazy to shoot a photo of a paper that says "Day X" in the morning of each day? I know my camera stamps the date on the file, but I think I need a more visual cue than that.
 
Well, we have 3 weeks of vacation to 3 different places this year. Our first was over Spring Break and I used the Collect app to create journal cards which I then had printed and I thought it was perfect for a vacation album. Just print those journal cards, stick them in the design F plastics from Becky and I'm done. I would work on putting them in Collect while I sat waiting for a show or on the drive home. And I pictured doing that for all three trips.

Then we went on our second trip and I realized I didn't want to use the Collect cards for those pictures. I wanted the pictures to be the focus and I didn't want that clean look for this trip. I wanted bright and vibrant and fun. I wanted to digitally pocket scrap them. I ended up editing all the photos and still being confused about what I wanted to do until yesterday when I stumbled on the perfect templates for putting them into pockets but including lots of journaling. I do have just a vacation album for each year so I guess what I'm planning to do is now add 12x12 plastics and print these pages as 12x12 and just have different styles within the same album.

For our first trip, I literally included every photo that I liked from the trip in my vacation album. I chose my favorites for my Project Life spread for the week. For this trip, I went through my folders of edited photos (I did daily folders within my week folder) and pulled out photos which I thought told the broader story of our week as well as photos where I had a series of 5-6 photos of the same activity and taking one out for Project Life wouldn't hurt the story I was telling. I actually did my PL spread first and now I'm working on the daily pages. [Of course, when I say "did my spread" I mean putting photos into a template... I do that fairly quickly after the week is over but then it may be a few weeks or a few days until I add the journal cards, etc.]

I guess my thing is to do what makes you happy and you might not know what that is until after the trip is over. Take a lot of photos, take notes if you'll need them to refresh your memory, and wait until you get home to put it together. Personally, I put getting PL caught up first, and working on the vacation stuff is for after PL is caught up. But in the end, it's your album so you should do what inspires you and works for you.
 
tkradtke said:
Strange question here... on a big long trip, has anyone shot divider photos between days? I was thinking, since I'm making the commitment now to unplug and not bring my laptop, that I would possibly need a way to keep my days separate on my memory card to make organizing photos easier once we're back. Would it be crazy to shoot a photo of a paper that says "Day X" in the morning of each day? I know my camera stamps the date on the file, but I think I need a more visual cue than that.
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That is not strange at ALL if you need the visual cue. Also, if you happen to have Lightroom, you can set up collections for each day and they will automatically all separate. I do that now for my weeks and it is MAGIC :giggle

We take a trip to California most years to visit family and I usually just do those pages when I'm inspired to do them, then add them into my general scrap albums (which are NOT chronological).

This year I plan to do a 2 page PL spread, probably an insert or two, then scrap the rest like I always do. It takes the pressure off of doing it "all" when I get back. The photos will be there when I'm ready for them.

I also have a planner like Rebecca, so I document what we do each day in that. I do keep some memorabilia, but honestly, don't usually do much with them. I think a Smash book is a fantastic idea... may try that this year.
 
MissKim said:
Personally, I put getting PL caught up first, and working on the vacation stuff is for after PL is caught up. But in the end, it's your album so you should do what inspires you and works for you.
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Thanks Kim! I think this is my plan. I'm also embracing the idea of waiting until we're home to work on it. I want to enjoy this vacation and experience all there is to do. I don't want to be thinking "oh I should get out my laptop and work on PL" throughout the trip. If we were going one place, things might be different, but with a different hotel each night, it's just more trouble than it's worth. If Clara and I keep up with our smash books each day and jot a few notes here and there, I should have a good resource for journaling when I'm ready to work. If I'm proactive with a plan before we leave, I think I won't feel as behind as I would otherwise. And knowing that I'm doing a separate trip album later means that I won't have to over think my PL spreads, so they should go together more quickly.
 
Oh Jen! That feature in Lightroom sounds fantastic! I don't have lightroom though and I should probably fix my dates in my camera (right now it changes days at noon, and has for years because I haven't bothered to change it).

I'm really excited about the smash books! Since we're traveling with my parents, we'll have more downtime that we normally might. My daughter is one of those kids that always has to be doing something and loves crafty stuff. So I thought decorating and documenting might be fun for her! Plus, she's that kid that ALWAYS wants to buy something at every gift shop... this way I can direct her towards the cheap stuff (postcards, stickers, etc.) so she can add it to her book! :-)
 
tkradtke said:
Plus, she's that kid that ALWAYS wants to buy something at every gift shop... this way I can direct her towards the cheap stuff (postcards, stickers, etc.) so she can add it to her book! :-)
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BONUS.
 
I just do a feature page for my album (like a snapshot of the vacation ) with the dates we were gone on it, and then do a separate vacation album.
 
When it comes to the photo of the day as a breaker, I do that all the time on trips. If not, I'll take a photo of what I'm wearing (or what the family is wearing) at the beginning of each day, that way I have a physical break in my photos when I go to organize them post-trip.

Hope that helps.
 
Love your idea for the smash books. Great way to keep notes and tickets, receipts, momentous, etc.

I just returned from two weeks away and I am doing a variety of the mentioned ideas here. :) it's great seeing / hearing how other people do it. Anyway, I used the collect app to select my photo a day every evening before bed. I find this helpful so I don't have to do it all at once at the end of the week. Worked well on vacation too. Some days I add more than one photo, what we did, food we ate etc with a note, for each. When I got home it helped remind me what day we did things and I could also choose my one fav photo for the PL, this will also be a helpful reference for the full travel album. I also took notes about what we did with details and funny things that happened using the notes app on my iPhone. (I also use Evernote). I kept a separate list of places we ate and food we ordered. Just jotted them down each evening before bed. On the plane on the way home I read through my notes and couldn't believe the things I would have already forgotten!

When I arrived home I did my usual PL page, I'm doing one page a week. I added my collect app photos like I always do and a few extra notes. I'm getting ready to begin my separate album now. I'm glad that I at least have the pl pages done and all my notes to work on the travel album. I find the more details I include the more interesting it is when I loom at it later.

Good luck!
 
krscraps said:
When it comes to the photo of the day as a breaker, I do that all the time on trips. If not, I'll take a photo of what I'm wearing (or what the family is wearing) at the beginning of each day, that way I have a physical break in my photos when I go to organize them post-trip.

Hope that helps.
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Great ideas Kim! I think having a "breaker" photo to start each day is going to be essential to me getting organized once we're home.
 
Thanks for posting your experience Nicole! Sounds like that's working well for you! I love reading everyone's ideas. My daughter will be using the collect app for her project life pages.

I think I'll definitely do like you did and make PL my first priority when we get back. I like the idea of already having the "photo of the day" preselected. I just need to remember that it is okay for these pages to be less detailed (just getting them done being the priority), since the details will go into the trip album. I'm excited about putting together this album once we're back. I've never taken notes or kept a journal before, so my trip albums have always ended up being "picture books". I'm hoping with having our smash books, there will be more story to the trip album when I put it together.
 
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