How to create a vacation photo book or travel journal: Part 1

Postcards are waning in popularity, but you may still find some cool vintage or artistic designs on your travels that would make great additions to your travelogue.

Do you have the best of memory-keeping intentions when you travel, only to find your photos stranded on social media and your collected souvenirs stuffed away in a box? No—don’t let that happen to you! Follow these simple steps to help you gather all the right elements during your trip so you can easily put together a photo book or travel journal when you get back home. A little planning goes a long way.

Do these things during your trip to make creating your travel memory book a cinch later:

1. Take notes over the course of your travels.

2. Collect some items to add local texture to your book later.

3. Snap some unexpected photographs.

1 - Take notes over the course of your travels.

By ‘notes’ I mean anything that will help you tell the story of your trip (in the moment you can’t imagine ever forgetting a single detail, but I promise you will!). A few possible notes include:

• reference photos—as you head into a venue or city, snap a reference picture of a sign that will orient you as to your location later

• handwritten jottings—of everything from tour guide names to the restaurant your family fell in love with

• printed ephemera—anything from the article you tore out of the in-flight magazine to a hotel brochure or museum ticket; you won’t necessarily keep all of these, but you will use them to fill in details when writing about your trip later. 

• a thorough travelogue—not everyone will want to do this (I admit I often have good intentions and then never get to it, especially since I became a mother), but writing about your trip in a journal as it happens can be not only a wonderful way to reflect on your time in a place but also to preserve memories to revisit later.

If I hadn’t snapped a photo of a nearby street sign before I took this shot of dramatic light on a picturesque church, I would never have known what Tuscany town this was from!

2 - Collect some items to add local texture to your book later.

Travel passes, museum ticket stubs, and other ephemera from your trip can be fun additions to your memory book when used in moderation.

There’s no need to buy a hundred postcards or tchotchkes, but selecting a few items that you can scan or photograph when you get home will add great visual interest to your travel book. Some favorite items I have collected on various family trips include:

• matchbooks (especially from favorite restaurants or hotels)

• stickers (especially these days, sticker designs are often way cooler than postcards!)

• simple vendor bags (sometimes a shopping bag or even a small paper bag a vendor slips your gum into may have interesting graphics, like one I got in Florence with a fleur-de-lis pattern)

• vintage postcards (I try to buy one of those “Greetings from…” postcards in every city I visit, but they’re getting harder and harder to find; I do seek out illustrated postcards, though, as they often have an artistic or nostalgic vibe I like)

• local maps (I’m talking both the kitschy maps marking destinations of interest to tourists as well as beautifully rendered ones often sold in shops)

3 - Take unexpected photographs, too.

Yes, of course snap the famous landmarks and get some group shots of your family posing in beautiful locales, but remember to also take pictures of less expected details, such as:

Detail photographs can add wonderful personality to the pages of your travel book. This bin of corks caught my attention on a winery tour not only because they have great texture, but because they say the name of the winery. And these cacti in bronzed shoes in Montepulciano—well, they’re just fun!

• candid photos of your traveling party

• fun selfies when the mood strikes

• photo booth strips—admittedly, I am a sucker for these nostalgic gems which invite goofy faces and extreme togetherness (ever tried to squeeze more than four people into one of those booths?!)

• details, details, details—on my recent Italy trip, for instance, I aimed my camera at wonderfully whimsical street art in both Florence and Rome; ancient bricks and walkways (ah, what texture!!); wrought-iron filigree designs; and even a few t-shirt slogans that resonated.

In Part Two I share next steps: what to do with all your photos, ticket stubs, and travel notes upon your return to make book creation a cinch!

If you’d rather hand over all your travel goodies to have your travel memory book professionally produced, please reach out to see how we can work together.