Scrapbooking on the Road

I write for Fodor's Travel Wire, my husband is a photographer who is always looking for new scenes to snap, and whether its for business or pleasure there's nothing we like better than traveling – especially road trips. Traveling and the desire to do something interesting with our travel photos is what got me interested in scrapbooking a decade or so ago, though back then I didn't refer to it as scrapbooking. I used to say I did "really elaborate photo albums."

I always have stacks of photos from our trips sitting on my hard drive, waiting for me to have the time to scrapbook them. I'm a couple of years behind now, and even though I took good notes because most of my trips turn into articles or guidebooks I'm still finding its hard to do justice to the memories after the trip is long over.

So when I read Ali Edwards' recent article on making a scrapbook on the road I thought it was a great idea – an idea so obvious I should have figured it out on my own years ago. One problem though, Ali suggests gluing down memorablia you pick up during the day (menus, matchbooks, business cards, maps, newspaper clippings, napkins, postcards, etc) and jotting down notes while leaving spaces to add your photos once you get home. I tried that but it totally doesn't work for me (doesn't mean it's not a fine suggestion, it just doesn't work for me). I design my pages around my photos since I'm lucky enough to have such terrific photos to work with – so adding the images later to a pre-made page wasn't the way for me to go.

Don't know why it took me so long to figure this out either, but the obvious solution is so simple. Now I just upload the digital files to a photo developer straight from my laptop computer each night when we're traveling (luckily most hotels, even the budget ones, have high speed internet service.) If I'm going to be in the same town for a couple of days, I enter the local zip code off the hotel stationery for my pick-up location and can pretty much always have my photos in my hands within an hour of hitting the send button. If I'm heading out early the next day, I enter the name of a town that I'll be passing through around lunchtime, and pick up my photos there.

I work on layouts at night for an hour or so. By the time I get home my travel scrapbook is usually done, and I can actually show people my layouts while they're still interested – no more telling them they'll need to wait months or years to see my trip photos. I'm also way more comfortable knowing we have a printed copy of my husband's pictures lest something happen to our equipment and we lose the digital files – we back up like crazy but I figure you can never have too many copies.

And there's something really wonderful about having real, physical prints of our photos to show to people I meet on the road who are interested in seeing where we've been. Having to drag out my laptop from its case, boot up the system, open Photoshop and show them pictures on the screen just takes too much time and kills the mood.

I'm thinking about doing a long road trip next fall, down the Blues Highway. The place where American music really began -- Highway 61 which runs from Chicago deep into the Delta and on to New Orleans. There's so much history to preserve in photos and words on that road – does anyone have any suggestions of where to go, what to see, good blues clubs, etc? And would you all be interested in reading a blog on a photography-taking, scrapbook-making road trip down the Blues Highway?

 

 

Comments

[Deb Suder]

I've read your stories on Fodors! Thought your name sounded familar. I get the newsletter. Anyway, would love to read a blues trip scrapbooking blog, my two favorite things are blues and scrapbooking. Bet your stories would be amazing. Do it!

[Rosie V.]

i wish i had thought to have my photos developed on my honeymoon. they were in my camera and the airline security scanner ruined them. thats the only thing that could have happened i think because my camera and the picture card are fine. but when i went to move the pictures from my camera to my computer the computer says the photos are in a unknow format. could the airport scanner have done this? anyway now i have no photos from my honeymoon.

[Michelle]

Rosie, airport security scanners aren't likely to have damaged photos stored on a flash card. You didn't leave an email address so I can't contact you directly, but if you happen to see this please feel free to email me one of your photos. Maybe I can help to figure out what went wrong.