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?
