4 Tips for Backing Up Your Photos While Travelling

It’s summer time! For many of you that means it’s finally time to jet set somewhere new and enjoy some much-deserved vacation days. You’ll travel by planes, trains and automobiles, cross countries and continents, experiencing incredible new places and taking hundreds of photos.

It’s important to take precautions while on your travels to ensure those irreplaceable photos are kept safe until your return home. Too often, we hear stories of friends or family members who have lost their precious travel photos due to a stolen phone, lost camera, or a damaged memory card. It’s something you hope will never happen, but it’s best to be prepared.

Before you take off on your summer vacation, our LDExperts recommend these tips for backing up and sharing your photos while travelling!

Invest in a Wi-Fi Camera

Left: Sony A5100, Right: Nikon D7500

Wi-Fi cameras are great for backing up your photos on-the-go while travelling. Depending on your preference, London Drugs offers Wi-Fi enabled DSLRs, like the Nikon D7500, as well as Wi-Fi enabled mirrorless cameras, like the Sony A5100. Mirrorless cameras are a particularly good choice for travel, as they are more compact, taking up less space in your bag, and are less conspicuous when out and about.

Just use the Wi-Fi feature and the accompanying smartphone app to send your photos directly to your phone to back them up as you go. You don’t need to have an internet connection for this to work – the Wi-Fi connection is actually just a wireless network connection between your two devices! Once your photos are transferred wirelessly to your phone, you can rest easy knowing that if anything happens to your camera or its SD card, you’ll also have them backed up on your phone.

Learn more about Wi-Fi cameras from our LDExperts Darren and Janice:

Upload & Order Prints From Your Smartphone

Whether you plan to back up your photos from a Wi-Fi camera, or are snapping all your travel photos on your smartphone, you can then easily upload those photos to our free London Drugs Photolab App! The app can be downloaded from the Apple App Store or Google Play, then just upload your photos and order prints on-the-go, wherever you are in the world. No more sifting through hundreds of photos on your return home – all your favourites will already be printed and awaiting pick-up at your local London Drugs (or you can have them shipped and waiting for you at home!).

Plus, if you create your own LDPhotolab account, any photos you upload to order prints of will be saved to your account. So if you happen to drop your phone in the Mediterranean Sea (knock on wood), you’ll still be able to access all those photos through your LDPhotolab account.

Use Multiple SD Cards or Hard Drives

If you plan to take your laptop along on your travels, consider backing up your photos to your laptop, a portable hard drive, flash drive, or multiple SD cards as an extra precaution. Try to do this every evening if you can, so that if something happens to your phone or camera during the next day, you’ll still have all those precious photos backed up.

Some cameras also have dual memory cards built into the camera, such as the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, so that you can automatically save to both cards simultaneously while shooting. Of course, if you’re going to use this method, make sure to put that second card somewhere safe when you can, to avoid losing both of them in one go.

Share Your Travel Photos in a Photobook

Once you’re back home from vacation, you’ll have a whole collection of beautiful travel photos to share! You can create photobooks, customized with vacation templates, and you’ll also be given the opportunity to add text like locations and dates.


Need a little help creating your photobook? Our Photolab Experts are ready to help you with all of your travel photo projects and prints – just visit us at your local London Drugs. Or you can get started right away by uploading your photos to our Photolab website, our London Drugs Photolab App for iOS and Android, or to our in-store Photolab kiosks.

Share Your Summer Travel Memories on Instagram…and IRL

Summer is the season of camping trips, beach vacations, hiking adventures and most importantly, making memories. With the extra-long days, there’s time to squeeze in even more outdoor activities. Whether you’re spending your summer being a tourist in your own town, or jet-setting to somewhere entirely new, you’re likely planning to snap a lot of photos along the way. After all, summer is fleeting, and the best way to preserve those memories is with photos.

Of course, part of preserving those memories is sharing them. We snap hundreds of photos while on vacation, but how many of them never end up seeing the light of day? Some of them get posted online to Facebook or Instagram, but there are plenty more that end up sitting on memory cards and hard drives unseen. Make the most out of your photos by printing them. There are endless ways to showcase your summer travels, from square Instagram Books and Book-Its, to photo DIYs if you’re feeling crafty.

 

Book-It Mini Books

Your photos tell a story of where you’ve been, what you’ve experienced, and what you’ve learned. It may feel bittersweet to arrive home after an incredible vacation, but it’s always fun to relive the best moments while journaling your trip in a photo book, like the 6×4 Book-It Mini Book. Pick a colourful, graphical theme and customize the layout and text to tell your story.

Instagram Books

Instagrammers rejoice, even your square photos can be turned into a photo book. Compile your Instagram-worthy shots into a 4×4 square Instagram photo book that’s wire-bound and printed on quality glossy or pearl photo paper. When family or friends ask how your summer vacation was, you can pull out your handy brag book to show them all the awesome places you explored this summer.

 

Photo Print DIYs

Start off with some good old 4×6 photo prints, and let your creativity do the rest! Collect ticket stubs and other small souvenirs throughout the summer, and use your photo prints to create a fun collage. Or make a Summer 2017 timeline to hang on the wall: pick a photo of each summer excursion, and use wooden pegs to hang them chronologically along a string.

If a traditional photo album is more your style, add your printed photos to a Pioneer Canada 150 Photo Album to showcase your favourite moments from #Canada150.

 

Don’t forget: great prints start with a great camera. If you have a vacation planned for later this summer, plan ahead and upgrade your camera so you can capture your summer memories in the best quality possible. It might be a matter of upgrading your smartphone, point-and-shoot or DSLR, or even switching up your camera’s lens to something new. You’ll appreciate the boost in quality when you go to print your photos!