Vacation Photo Solutions

You've just come home from a fabulous vacation, the bags are unpacked, and your family has gathered around you in excitement as you rip open your package of photos. Oh no... what is this? Red-eye? Dark faces? Bright glare off the tropical blue water? Whose blurry face is that? Now what will you do? You have your memories of course, but how will you record all those fun stories if your photographs have not turned out as well as expected? Never fear, there are plenty of fun and creative ways to create layouts about your vacation that don't rely on having fabulous photos.

Try Again

I would first suggest returning to your photo development store with your negatives and seeing what they can do to help lighten or darken some of the photos to make them more acceptable. This can also be done on your computer if you have some proficiency using photo-editing software. Photo-editing software will allow you to alter the color of your photos, remove red-eye, and crop out distracting and/or blurry areas in the photos.

Change the Coloring

For some simple problems, such as washed-out colors or overly bright, mismatched colors within your photos you could convert your pictures to black-and-white images. This may be a simple solution for some of those poor vacation photos.

In this layout by Andrea Steed, the original photo was extremely dark. Andrea brightened it in Adobe Photoshop and then printed it on cardstock for a more artistic look, and to save a photo she loved.

Creative Cropping

Don't forget the power of the paper trimmer! Creative cropping can result in some fantastic photos you never intended to take! For a layout about taking our girls to the beach I used a large square punch to cut out just their feet in the sand, a little bit of rolling wave, and other tidbits of otherwise poor photos. When matted and lined up along the bottom of my layout I was happy to see a creative photo border that enhanced my layout considerably.

In this layout, the photos were dark and blurry since they were taken inside the ride. To make them usable, I cropped down the photos to remove blurry spots and used three small photo pieces to create a border treatment for the left page.

Use Memorabilia

If there is simply no saving those photos, don't give up! First, start gathering any memorabilia you may have. Entire layouts can easily be based on fun keepsakes and original journaling. Creating colorful embellishments for your layouts will give them some visual interest as well. We as crafters are so lucky to have the extensive selection of vacation-themed papers and embellishments that are currently on the market.

Remember to add items such as plane tickets, baggage claim stubs, receipts, menus, napkins, plastic hotel key cards, etc. to your layouts. These are often fun and overlooked keepsakes that you could build a layout around.

Find Photos

Another little tip I've discovered is to search the internet for pictures of the place you went on vacation. Our last family vacation was to Florida. We took our children to Disney World. We were so busy keeping our eyes on the four kids that we didn't get as many good photos as we would have liked. By searching the internet I found some wonderful jpeg images of the castle, close-ups of the rides, and some of the characters. I was able to crop them to add to tags and to create other fun embellishments to supplement the photos I was able to use. Be sure to get permission if you come across any images that are copyright protected. When I explained my dilemma and what I would be using the images for I got very favorable feedback from people, and most of them had no issue with my use of their photo in a non-commercial way.

If you left your vacation destination without gathering as many souvenirs as you would like you can try contacting your hotel and the main offices of any event locations you visited. Most of them will mail you brochures and other literature if you ask them.

The key to creating a fantastic vacation album isn't just having wonderful photos to work with (although that sure doesn't hurt!); it's all about getting your memories onto a page using enthusiastic journaling and fun memorabilia. Anyone can create an album their family will treasure, and their friends will enjoy. It's just a matter of being creative and making the best of what you've got!

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