Why photo albums make for the perfect musing of your travel photographs

Travelling and photography  go hand in hand. There is no better pairing than a great holiday remembered by pictures of special moments. Whether you travel with friends, family, or go it alone, you will no doubt have a few photographs by the end of your time away.

Quick and easy access to phones, or even retro polaroid cameras, make capturing a moment even easier. But what happens to the hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures taken on holidays or longer periods of travelling? I, for one, am guilty of storing unreasonable numbers of photos on my phone, many of which I forget I have as soon as I get home.

Social media feeds are often dotted with perfectly posed travel photographs. Platforms like Instagram provide an online space both to share your own holiday pictures and to browse other people’s travel snaps. Whether you approve of so-called ‘instatourism’ or not, posting holiday photos online is one way to make use of the many photographs taken while travelling.

An album or photo book can make the best souvenir for any trip

There is, of course, the more old-fashioned option of a photo album. In such a digital world it can be easy to leave traditional hard-copies behind, but there is still value in going to the effort of making a physical photo album. Rather than storing photos digitally or sending them between various group chats, actively selecting holiday shots to print and then ordering them into an album can be the perfect opportunity to remember travel highlights before charging straight back into everyday student life.

An album or photo book can make the best souvenir for any trip. They are highly individual because they lend themselves well to personalisation. Where some might opt for an eclectic, scrapbook style album with ticket stubs and postcards mixed in with photos, others might favour a more minimalist approach with structured layouts and matching colour schemes. In this way, no two albums are the same, even when the people making them went away together and did the same things at the same time.

Over the summer I went on a family holiday to Dubrovnik and a girl’s holiday to Budapest. I was snap-happy as usual and ended up with a phone bursting with photographs capturing unforgettable memories with friends and family. However, when I got home, I made sure to go through my gallery and collect the best photos into an album, deleting any duplicates or blurred images.

It gave me a chance to fully appreciate my travels

Not only did this free up some much-needed storage, but it gave me a chance to fully appreciate my travels. I had worked as a temporary receptionist over the holidays, so taking the time to go through my pictures gave me the chance to see the real-life value of hours spent answering calls sat behind a front desk.

Once you have chosen which photos you want to print, there are lots of printing options to choose from. Traditional printing shops or high street shops like Boots are still a reliable way to get photos developed. There are also newer app-based solutions such as Freeprints or Snapfish which are easy to use and inexpensive. I’ve found freeprints to be a cheap and easy way to print digital photos.

If you’d like a physical copy of your holiday photos but would rather not have to buy an album in which to keep them, photo books have become an increasingly popular and accessible option. Photos are printed in any order you choose on photograph quality paper and bound in a hard cover with any available edits or designs of your choosing. They too are offered on the high-street as well as via apps.

Creating a physical reminder of your holiday is a worthwhile investment

Whether you go for a homemade album or a pre-made photo book, creating a physical reminder of your holiday is a worthwhile investment. After a few years you’ll have a gallery of albums or photo books documenting your travels, which you can look back over if you need to stave off your latest bout of wanderlust. Photo books can also fit so many more images than is socially acceptable to post on social media, so you get to enjoy even more of your photos collected in one place.

Albums and photo books do not have to be kept to yourself either, they can be shared with others. Older members of my family certainly appreciated being able to flick through an album instead of having to swipe through endless photos on my phone when I showed them my travel pictures this Christmas. Travel photo albums and photo books also make thoughtful gifts to those with whom you travelled. If you have photos languishing on your phone and would like to make something of them, a travel album or photo book may well be the perfect solution for you.