One of the best parts of finishing up a trip is looking back on all the incredible photos you’ve taken. Photos allow you to relive your favorite memories from an adventure, and when shared, help transport others to a specific moment in time that you experienced and deftly captured.
With so many different ways to share your photos, it’s easy to get lost in all of the options. Each photo sharing site or service offers different features and sorting through all of them can be time consuming and overwhelming.
That’s why we’ve created this guide to the best (and easiest) ways to share your travel photos.
What to Look for in a Photo Sharing Site
Knowing what to look for in a photo sharing site is the first step in determining which one is right for you. Here are some key things to keep in mind.
Ample Storage Space
First, take a look at how much storage space is offered by the website or provider. If you have a ton of photos or particularly large files (namely in the RAW format), you’re going to want to choose a site that has a lot of storage for a low price.
If you’re more of a casual photographer, a few GB of storage should be just fine. Luckily, many websites offer a certain amount of GB for free before you need to start paying for a plan.
Easy Access
Another thing you’ll want to think about is how you can access the photo sharing site.
Access is an important consideration because you’ll want to be able to pull up your photos when and where you want. If it’s a website, you’ll almost always need an internet connection to get to your photos, unless the site (or associated app) is available for offline use.
Along the same lines, do you want to be able to access and share photos only from a desktop website? Or do you want to do a quick occasional upload from your phone as well? If this is the case, it’s better that you choose a sharing service that has an app for your smartphone as well.
Ease of Use
You’ll want to choose a website or service that’s easy to use in terms of uploading and sharing your photos. It should be easy to send photos in an email to friends and family or have the convenience of having social media buttons for a quick upload to connected websites like Facebook or Twitter.
You’ll also want a site that allows you to easily find what you’re looking for instead of sorting through thousands of photos. It’s best to choose a platform that allows you to sort your photos by name, date, and other tags so you can save yourself some time that would have otherwise been spent scrolling through an endless mass of files.
Retains Quality of Photos
Finally, it’s best to choose a photo sharing site that will retain the original quality of your photos.
The last thing you want is your photos to be compressed or distorted to the point where you lose the magic of the shot in the first place. Pick a photo sharing site that will allow you to upload your original shots, or a self-edited version of them. It’s better not to let the site auto-edit for you as you’ll lose control over the quality of the file.
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Keeping in mind what to look for, here are four different ways to share your travel photos.
Each offers their own individual benefits so hopefully you’ll be able to find one that’s best for your specific sharing purposes!
Cloud Storage – Best for Sharing Photos in Bulk and for Collaboration
One of the best ways to share your travel photos is to upload them to a cloud storage website.
Using a service like Dropbox is highly effective when it comes to sharing travel photos because you’re able to upload them, organize them into different folders, and shoot them off to whomever you wish to share them with.
Dropbox specifically is highly efficient at sharing large numbers of photos. After they’re all uploaded, you’re able to send a link to someone to enable them to view and download the photos. The recipient doesn’t even need a Dropbox account to access them!
Many cloud storage websites make sharing your photos easy. They often have direct links to social media websites and offer the option to create an email attachment with your photos once uploaded. Plus, you can be sure photo quality is not compromised since you’ll be sharing the original files.
One of the biggest perks of using a cloud storage website is that most of them allow for collaboration. This means you can create and share a folder of photos with someone and they have the ability to add their own photos to this spot as well! This is great if you just took a trip with friends and want to quickly and efficiently share stellar shots with one another.
Photo-Specific Websites – Best for Professional Photographers
Besides cloud storage, you can also upload your photos to websites specifically dedicated to photography. These sites create a network of photographers who want to share their shots with loved ones or the rest of the world.
Sites like Unsplash and Photobucket all fall under the umbrella of photo-specific websites, and each of them has a giant collection dedicated to travel photos.
While these websites are generally targeted towards professional photographers, they’re also a great platform for those who love photography as a hobby. You can find any type of photo on these websites, as they’re made especially for sharing.
Sharing your photos on these websites allows you to easily send them off to friends and family, but also allows others to repurpose your work for their own use (under specific guidelines of course). It also makes it easy for people to reach out and contact you about your work, leading to greater photography opportunities.
A photo sharing site that I am particularly partial to is VSCO.
VSCO is a smartphone application that allows you to upload and edit your photos before posting them to your profile. It’s kind of a hybrid between photo sharing website and social media, but it’s an entire platform dedicated to photography with an associated online URL. It makes it easy to get your photos out there, as well as send them directly to those you want to share them with.
Social Media – Best for Sharing with Family and Friends
One of the most popular methods of sharing travel photos is through social media. Social media platforms, especially Facebook, are made specifically for people to connect and share their experiences and general life details with those who are friends with them.
Facebook allows you to create albums and upload as many photos as you like, making it a great way to not only share photos but store them as well.
If you’ve had Facebook for a long time, you know what a great pleasure it is to scroll through albums from 2011 to see smiles laden with braces, peace signs, and plastic sunglasses. Facebook has a certain time capsule effect and makes it easy for you to point someone in the direction of your photos from any trip. All you have to say is “check out my latest album on Facebook!”
Besides Facebook, Instagram is another popular social media platform. Instead of getting all the mumbo jumbo status updates you get from long-lost high school friends on Facebook, Instagram is only for photos. All you have to do is upload them to your profile and you get to create a curated look into your life and travels.
Instagram is rather effective for sharing photos as you can attach a hashtag that allows your photos to appear under an umbrella other than your profile. This makes it easy to share not only with your friends, family and follows, but also with anyone who’s searching for photos that are #travel #related.
One downside to note is that social media platforms tend to compress your images into smaller files so that they load more quickly. So while the share-factor is great, don’t forget to have your own back-up of your photos elsewhere!
Blog – Best for Creating a Photo Diary
Last but not least, you can share your photos via a personal or photo blog. A blog is a great way to send your photos around to friends and family, while incorporating captions, stories and lessons learned along the way.
Setting up a blog is fairly easy. Basically, all you have to do is pick a website to host it and then create it according to your personal specifications. There are many themes for blogs that are tailored to be photo-driven, allowing you to share your pictures far and wide.
A blog gives a special look into your travels and is particularly interesting for those who are invested in learning what you’ve been up to on the road. You can update it as regularly as you please, and it can also become something of a photo diary when you have something to upload.
Filters and captions can make your images livelier and fancier. Consider editing you photos before placing them on a blog post with the same filter to maintain the mood. We recommend using programs like Movavi Photo Editor which has easy to use filters, frames, and other text editing options.
If you invest enough time and energy into creating your blog, you can even make money from it similar to what we do!
There you have it: four of the best methods to share your travel photos. Whether you use one, or a combination of different sites, you’ll be able to share your photos with friends, family or the rest of the world.
Nothing is more special than reminiscing on a trip, so be sure to share the magic with everyone else!
This is a sponsored post for Dropbox. All opinions are my own. Dropbox is not affiliated with nor endorses any other products or services mentioned.
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