Ten Great Ways to Share Holiday Photos with Family and Friends

It’s something we’ve all had to endure: the viewing of a gazillion, not always great holiday photos from a recently returned and highly enthused friend or family member.

Sharing travel memories with loved ones is a noble cause, and our top tip for getting them on board willingly is to take good photographs. It’s also essential to go through your shots when you get home, and narrow the number of images for public display down to those that are the most meaningful to you.

Next, get creative with how you present your pictorial mementoes. With a little thought, it can be a pleasurable occurrence for everyone.

Here are ten amazing ways to share your holiday photos with family and friends.

1. Launch a website or travel blog

Today, anyone can be an online publisher — and launching a website or blog is a wonderful way to record the finer details of your trip, showcase your photos, and inspire other travellers to follow in your footsteps. If you have the budget, a professionally designed website will combine cutting-edge design, intuitive navigation, and seamless flow — resulting in an exceptional user experience. Alternatively, start small with a free platform like WordPress, which will come with plenty of automated processes. Aim to publish a new ‘post’ (a short story about your travels) every couple of days, incorporating three or four paragraphs of text and a selection of your best pics. Many travellers find the late afternoon lull (between the end of the day’s sightseeing and dinner) a great time to write. Share links to the posts on your social media accounts.

2. Publish a holiday Facebook page

If starting a website sounds too ambitious, opt for setting up a dedicated Facebook page for your travels. It’s a great way to keep interested contacts informed and share images as you go — without bombarding everyone you know with the content. Add personalised graphics and themed cover art to the page, and perhaps a map and itinerary. Once the set-up is complete, invite contacts to ‘like’ your holiday page and receive notifications when you put up a new post. Get into the habit of publishing an update each day, and remember to resize photos for Facebook’s format.

3. Send personalised digital postcards

If you’re of a reasonable vintage, you’ll remember the joy of regularly receiving postcards in the mail and marvelling at the summary of the sender’s movements hastily scrawled on the back. And yes, some travellers do still buy and send postcards by ‘snail mail’. However, a popular variation of the theme these days is the digital postcard, where you send postcards online (essentially by email) featuring your own images. It’s a great way to share photos over the course of your trip and keep in regular contact with those at home.

4. Go old school with an album or scrapbook

If you prefer to wait until after your holiday to share the memories captured with a click, there are plenty of fun ways to do it. The traditional photo album or scrapbook is an oldie but a goodie: it requires you to make hard decisions about which images to leave in and out, and it necessitates some effort and cost to do (which your audience will appreciate). You can arrange the photos in the order of your choosing and add other elements to each page (such as ticket stubs, brochures, and so on). The end result will be a tactile experience for all concerned.

5. Produce a coffee table book

Up the ante on an album or scrapbook by publishing a glossy coffee table book of your favourite images. There are several online photo book publishing platforms to choose from, and again, the process will encourage you to whittle down your cache of pics to the best of the best. With a little effort and some trial-and-error along the way, you can look forward to the day your published visual memoir arrives. Display it with pride and encourage your guests to have a flick.

6. Rotate your pics in a digital photo frame

Framed holiday photos are a lovely addition to any home and appealing for visitors to look at. But if you just can’t decide which ones to frame — do them all! A digital photo frame will allow you to upload as many images as you like and display them sequentially or randomly — depending on the setting you choose.

7. Make a movie or slideshow

Another amazing way to share your travel photos is to animate them in a video presentation. And it’s a lot easier to do than it sounds. Master a simple online editing platform (there are oodles of them), import your images into the project, and bring them to life with some simple movement. Pan up, down, or across an image, or slowly zoom in or out. Add a transition effect between each one and try setting the sequence to music for even greater impact. Your inner-DeMille is waiting to be unleashed!

8. Give gifts that showcase your snaps

Holiday gifts are a time-honoured tradition, but why not ditch the fridge magnets and giant novelty pencils (which were probably produced in a country other than the one you visited anyway) in favour of something with a personal touch? There are many useful items that can be personalised with one of your holiday photos and ordered in small numbers. Mugs and mouse mats immediately spring to mind, but you could also do cushion covers, calendars, coasters, and even shower curtains! And you’ll be giving a meaningful piece of travel magic, which can be enjoyed by the recipient each and every day.

9. Hang your finest shots on the wall

Are there three or four photos from your trip that you’re really proud of? Enjoy them on a daily basis and share them with visitors as wall art. Transforming photographs into prints on canvas is an easy process and hanging a number of small or medium-size canvases together in one arrangement will create extra visual oomph.

10. Get crafty

But why stop at canvas prints? There are endless ways to incorporate your travel images into notable works of art around the home. Think mobile-making, embroidery, stencilling, collage work, printed tiles, and the list goes on. The only limit to what you can make is your creativity!

This post was published thanks to JTB Studios.

Do you have any suggestions to add to our list of the best ways to share holiday photos with family and friends? We would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment below.

Additional images: Envato and Bigstock