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Organizing travel photos can be a daunting task. If you’re like us, you might have photos from a trip taken 5 years ago that you never got around to doing anything with. Either the photos were never organized, they were imported into a different program, or they got moved off of your computer for lack of space. They might even be on an old hard drive you’d forgotten about until this moment!<\/p>\n
When Jacob and I first left for our 3 month Europe road trip<\/a>, we had only one hard drive with us and no plans for organizing our travel photos. A lot has changed since then. Since we often travel multiple times a month and take thousands of photos each trip, we’ve had to prioritize photo organization and our editing process. This blog post covers how we stay organized before and after a trip, and how we use Adobe Lightroom to sort and edit photos. If you aren’t familiar with Adobe Lightroom, I recommend checking out their basic tutorials here<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the task of photo organization, take my advice: don’t start by organizing old photos. Instead, implement a new system for an upcoming trip (or a trip you recently went on). Once you have a plan in place, you’ll be more likely to follow through on the next trip, and you’ll find it much easier to re-visit your old travel photos as well.<\/p>\n Organization starts with being prepared before leaving on a trip. One of our most-used items (no matter where in the world we are) are our Samsung SSD hard drives<\/a>. We actually carry 2-3 of these hard drives along with us at any given time, and have started buying the large 2 TB ones. They are small, lightweight, solid state hard drives – meaning they can be picked up or dropped, unlike other hard drives. We have yet to have one fail in the last four years. Here’s what’s on my hard drives right now:<\/p>\n Hard Drive A<\/strong><\/p>\n Hard Drive B<\/strong><\/p>\n I have one main Lightroom catalog that I edit from, called my FUL Master Catalog<\/strong>. This catalog lives on my computer, and sources RAW photos from my hard drives when they are plugged in. I back it up to Dropbox whenever I close out of it (you can set Lightroom to do this automatically). If I open the catalog without a drive plugged in, it will say ‘The file could not be found’. This is because my RAW files are located on the hard drives I mentioned above. Since RAW photos are large files, keeping them on hard drives means they never take up space on my computer or slow it down.<\/p>\n While traveling, I try to ‘drop’ photos every night. This means I plug in my hard drive, open Lightroom, and import the photos I shot that day.<\/p>\n We always import photos directly into Adobe Lightroom<\/a> so we can organize them right away. The first time I import photos on a trip, I create a new folder that lives on Hard Drive A. For instance: Norway 2019<\/strong>. Here’s my general Lightroom workflow:<\/p>\n 2019<\/strong> (Collection Set)<\/em> After my photos have imported into Lightroom, I go through and assign 3 stars to any photos I like. If there are a few shots I like from the same location, I assign them all 3 stars. I don’t overthink this part, because I can always go back and narrow these down further.<\/p>\n When I’ve gone through and edited all my photos, I’ll export all my 4 star and 5 star photos onto my computer. I always export photos with a couple different settings. This is necessary for me because I need a small image size when uploading to my blog, but a larger image size for Instagram. I also may need a high resolution image for the future if I want to sell the image. You may only need one image size depending on what you use your photos for.\u00a0<\/span> Here are the folders I create for every destination I take photos in and export photos from:<\/span><\/p>\n Blog Export (750K)<\/strong> – this is where I do my final export of all my 4 star photos, formatted for my blog. For this, I limit the file size to 750K and my image width is set to 2000 pixels, to fit my blog dimensions.<\/em> At any given time, we always have a back up of our photo files. This is SO important! You never know when something will go wrong, and losing those memories forever can be heartbreaking. <\/span>In general, your photos should be backed up in two locations. The first location<\/strong> should be in a place you can access. The second location<\/strong> should be a failsafe back up, meaning you would only ever use it in a worst case scenario (i.e. a fire or break-in). The second back up should be kept separate from your other one for that reason.<\/p>\n Keep in mind when I first import photos in Lightroom from a trip and put them on Hard Drive A, I also don’t delete them from my memory card. So when I’m traveling, I always have two copies: on Hard Drive A, and on the memory card that’s in my camera. When I return back home, I use the below protocol to back up photos. Unless you take photos as part of your job, you likely don’t require as much space as we do, so we’ve provided alternate recommendations.<\/span><\/p>\n Samsung Hard Drive <\/strong><\/a>– these drives can be used as a back up drive if you don’t have many photos, less than 1 TB. (I use these drives to work off of at home and while traveling, not as a back up.) Cloud based, Dropbox<\/strong><\/a> or Google Drive<\/strong><\/a><\/strong> – if you have 1-2 TB of photos. It’s so important to have extra memory cards, hard drives, and even camera batteries on a trip. Jacob has always been good about this, and his habits have definitely rubbed off on me! Here’s a round-up of the items mentioned above and alternate recommendations:<\/span><\/p>\n —<\/span><\/p>\n Questions about photo organization? Leave a comment below and we’ll do our best to advise!<\/span><\/p>\nPrior to a trip<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nWhile on a trip<\/h3>\n
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\nNorway 2019<\/strong> (Collection Set)<\/em>
\nLofoten 2019<\/strong> (Collection Set)<\/em>
\nDay 1 – Nusfjord<\/strong> (Collection)<\/em>
\nDay 2 – Reinebringen<\/strong> (Collection)<\/em>
\n…and so on<\/em><\/p>\nSelecting photos to edit<\/h3>\n
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Shop my Lightroom photography presets<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Exporting photos<\/span><\/h3>\n
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\nBlog Posts<\/strong> – If I’m writing a blog post for a destination, I’ll export photos here and name the files with the name of the blog post for SEO purposes. I use the same export settings as above.\u00a0<\/em>
\nInstagram Export (2000p)<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>– this is where I do my final export of all my 4 star photos, formatted for Instagram. For this export I don’t limit the file size, but I keep my image width at 2000 pixels. Instagram’s width is 1080, but I find this gives me flexibility if I want to crop later on or use these photos elsewhere.\u00a0<\/em>
\nInstagram Posts<\/strong> – this is where I typically export a few 5 star photos while editing to preview them. I’ll often Airdrop photos from this folder to my phone. I use the same export settings as above.\u00a0<\/em>
\nBefore\/After<\/strong> – I export a few photos with edits I like here, so I can share them on my @finduslostpresets<\/a> account. I use the same export settings as above.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
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<\/p>\nBacking up photos<\/span><\/h3>\n
Main Back Up Drive Recommendations<\/h4>\n
\nG-Raid Drive <\/strong><\/a>– if you have between 1-10 TB of photos. You can also work directly off of this drive.
\nSynology Diskstation<\/strong><\/a> & Drives<\/strong><\/a><\/strong> – if you have more than 10 TB of photos. This drive is not designed to be worked from, so you always need to copy a folder off if you want to edit it. (This is what we use as a back up drive.)<\/p>\nFailsafe Back Up Drive Recommendations<\/h4>\n
\nCloud based, Backblaze<\/strong><\/a><\/strong> – if you have up to 10 TB of photos. Though Backblaze allows for unlimited storage, the upload times are quite slow, so it can be impractical after 10 TB.
\nSynology<\/strong><\/a> or another physical hard drive<\/strong> – if you have more than 10 TB of photos. (We’re currently in the process of switching from Backblaze to Synology).<\/p>\n\n
\n<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\nFinal Tips + Product Recommendations<\/span><\/h3>\n
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