My secret for taking lots of travel photos and not deleting any of them

We are currently traveling in New Zealand and taking lots of pictures! I’ve taken about 1200 pictures so far, and Jim has probably taken nearly the same. How would you like to see a slide show?

I think not! But, here’s our trip album with just our selected photos – just click this link to view the album.

The conventional method of photo organizing teaches to:

  • Keep the best
  • Delete the rest

But, I am way too lazy! Deciding which pictures need to be deleted is both time-taking and stressful. That sounds like work to me. I avoid work! I will certainly delete the obvious garbage – the mistakes when my phone took a photo of the inside of my pocket, or my foot, but, at the Hobbiton movie set yesterday, everywhere we turned was a beautiful image. Our phones take great pictures, and Google Photos stores them in the cloud, unlimited and free, so why not take every picture you see. I am not even close to being a professional photographer, but if I take enough – I’m bound to catch a good one here and there! Here is what my phone’s Google Photos screen looked like yesterday:

This is about 1/4 of the pictures I took at the Hobbiton movie set

I can’t delete any of those! But, I can pick out 3 or 4 representative shots to put in our New Zealand trip album, so that’s what I do. My method is:

  • Keep them all
  • Pick a few for the album and add them

That’s easy, actually it’s fun. I can even accomplish that, using my phone, on the tour bus on the way back to the RV! I love looking at the pictures I just took, adding a few of them to the trip album is as easy as tapping the 3-dot menu, selecting Add to Album, and tapping the New Zealand album. Before I go to bed at night, my friends and family are all able to see the wonderful things we did that day by viewing the album.

Just a few pictures made it to the album

I cringe when I hear people say, “I took so many pictures on my vacation, now I have to spend a few days deleting and organizing them once I get home.” How many people never get around to that? That’s work. What a shame.

What about photos on your computer?

I took the pictures with my phone, Google Photos uploads them to the cloud. I can view all those photos using my computer as long as I have an Internet connection. So easy! If I add photos to an album using the phone I will see them in that album using the computer. If I use the computer to do the work, I’ll see it on the phone. So easy! But, what if I don’t have a connection? What if I want my photos on the computer? That’s when I download the album to my computer by clicking the 3-dot menu. Voila! I’m not taking up unnecessary hard drive space, but I have my best photos on the computer. Essentially it is a backup of my best photos.

For more details and a complete photo management workflow, see my book, Mrs. Geek’s Guide to Google Photos, chapter 11. Geeks on Tour membership includes free access to the .pdf of the book here.

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