As a digital scrapbooker, sometimes I think I’m lucky to have my hobby contained within a laptop computer. Unfortunately that over-simplifies the situation when it comes to the documentation process.
Before we can scrapbook, we must capture the photos and stories of our lives. This part can become more complicated to organize than even the most cluttered hard drives on a good day, let alone when traveling.
I want to use today’s post to kick off a short series on organization and memory keeping while traveling for fun or work. Also to come over the next 2 weeks:
- Excellent gear for memory keepers on the go
- Ultimate options for fuss-free travel journaling
- Essential strategies for the traveling scrapbooker
- Sure-thing supplies for scrapbooking your travels
Let’s start by pondering these questions, as they relate to photography & scrapbooking:
- What do you take (and not take) when you travel?
- What’s your system for carrying everything?
- Do you plan ahead when it comes to your documentation?
camera bag
camera – kept in camera bag
lens cloth – kept in camera bag
extra (empty) memory card(s) – kept in camera bag
extra (charged) batteries – kept in camera bag
battery charger – kept in luggage
laptop (only sometimes, depends on the trip) – kept in laptop bag
mini USB cord (only if bringing laptop) – kept in laptop bag
*If I were ever to travel where there were different voltage requirements I would plan for that as well.*
I really only plan ahead for special events. Last year on our annual trip to visit Grandpa in Florida DH, DD & Grandpa planned a fishing trip, they were gone all day. I wasn’t going and I wasn’t handing over my camera so I purchased a waterproof disposable. Photo quality definitely suffered but they weren’t horrible and a few were really nice. Most importantly, the memories were recorded and no equipment suffered. LOL I didn’t get actual prints developed, just had them put on a disc.
What type of camera bag and laptop bag do you use?
Well, in two days I am leaving on an 18 day trip to Africa (I’m in the midwestern US). Haven’t traveled internationally since my paper scrapping days – and then I had a film camera, but here’s what I’m bringing:
Tamrac camera backpack
Canon 40d, three lenses (50 mm, Tamron 18-200, Canon 70-200 2.8 IS (rental))
Appropriate filters and batteries; cleaning clothes; rocket blower
Canon Speedlite 430ex II
Canon 590A P&S digital Camera
if it fits – my old Canon Rebel 300d as a second body.
Acer Netbook
Toshiba 640 gb Portable Hard Drive
Card Reader; multiple CF cards and SD cards
rechargable batteries for P&S and for Speedlite
MP3 player
I plan to blog everyday as letters to my kids. I will get specific details of the day and a few pictures into each post to remind myself of the daily activities.
I have Picasa on the netbook so that I can tag and sort pictures. I will do basic editting with it to make the pics postable on flickr and the blog – but probably won’t upload more than 10-20 pictures per day. All the pictures from any given day will be saved to a file for that days date, with subfiles for events/places if needed.
I’m hoping that tagging some photos as FAV and some as DUD will help me get the full editing done faster once at home – we’ll see!
Mary
WOW that is a TRIP of a lifetime! Have a fantastic time and I wish you safe travels!
My camera & laptop bags are pretty basic, from Target. I’ll have to look at them when I get home to know for sure. I didn’ t want to spend a lot or get something too big. We have 2 laptops. The older one is larger and that bag is also larger w/more space to fit accessories. Mine doesn’t have much extra room, I wanted a grab-it and go kind of bag for the 2nd laptop knowing I could always use the older, larger bag for longer trips. Sometimes I’ll digi scrap at a friend’s house while she paper scraps and since all my supplies are EASY to travel with, I’m the one who goes to her. My camera bag is big enough to hold the camera but also with some extra space so that I could also use it like a purse, carrying around my sunglasses, some $$, ID, keys, etc. Once in a while I’ll put my camera in my purse but I don’t really like that at all, there’s no structure and I feel like I’m just asking for it to be damaged.
For several trips now, I have made a “travel journal”: 5.5″ x 8.5″ pages (letter paper in landscape mode cut in half), one page per day. I make the journal in Word, with fields to fill in per day, such as meals, places, events, shopping etc. I design the form depending on the trip: for example, our trip to France, there were fields for wine and cheese (hello! it was France!), while our trip to New York, more space was left for the Shopping field (hello! it was New York!)
This has worked so well for me that it has been copied by my youngest daughter. It has become part of the vacation ritual to make our travel journals. We fill in the information each day during our vacation, usually while we’re taking a coffee / wine break.
Of course, we bring the laptop and have various cameras as well, as others have noted. It’s not a vacation without (too many) photos…!
We upload the photos to Facebook while we’re on vacation for sharing with family. It’s great.
Next time, I’d like to try an easy blog, like Posterous, where we tell a story, and keep it password protected for our family. I’m mulling that one over.
Hi Elisabeth, I love your idea! Would you mind sharing your travel journal template? Thanks, Tanya