Different ways that you can document a holiday or vacation

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I'm fortunate enough to have enjoyed some amazing travel experiences around the world, and I love reliving my holiday memories whether that's looking through photographs or re-reading my old travel journals. Documenting your travel memories is a great way to preserve them, whether for your own personal reminiscences or to share with others, and so I've put together a list of different methods. 

A written travel journal (with ephemera)

This is my personal favourite! A travel journal can either be written as you go along or on your return. I used to keep notes in a temporary notebook and copy them up later, but recently I've been writing straight into my current journal. A lot depends on the type of holiday - if you will be rushing about from place to place then you might just want to take quick notes, if you will have time to sit and write while you are travelling or in the hotel during the evening then you can take more time over it.

I always preferred to write on my return because I didn't want to run the risk of losing it or of anyone else reading it. I also didn't want to be distracted from enjoying the holiday or feeling too much pressure to keep up with writing it. But these days our holidays tend to involve a little more chill out time, and I don't have as much free time at home to catch up with it all!

You can either have a journal just for writing, or go with more of a collage style. I personally love collecting bits and pieces to stick into my journals - leaflets, tickets, maps, food packaging, business cards, coins or paper currency, stamps, stickers, themed washi tape and so on. I like to include practical details in case I want to refer back to them - the addresses of where we stayed, attractions that we visited and prices, what and where we ate, important dates.

If you are writing while you are away you might want to include sensory details - sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures. You can also write lists either as you go along or at the end - favourite places, best meals, top beaches, most memorable moments, favourite souvenirs. Also think about whether you are writing a personal journal or one that you want to share with others, because your writing style will likely change depending on your audience.

An illustrated travel journal

An illustrated journal is more like a sketchbook, containing drawings, paintings and perhaps also travel ephemera. It could be scrapbook style with photographs (either polaroids, using a mini photo printer, or added in on your return). Drawings can either be done in situ or else working from photographs when you get back. 

For my next travel journal I'm intending to add some quick sketches and watercolours. We don't often have time to sit still long enough to work on a picture so I'll probably use photographs, hopefully finding some time in the evenings!

A printed photobook using your travel photos

If you enjoy taking photographs, a great way to make sure that you don't forget all about them is to have them printed into a photobook. There are lots of different companies that offer this, and you can usually arrange the photographs how you like, along with captions and larger sections of text. 

It would be nice to include candid photos rather than just staged shots of the main sights. You could also include pictures of your accommodation, meals, photographs taken while travelling for example in the plane. Just make sure to live in the moment and not worry too much about getting the perfect shot!

Photo credit Arun Prakash via Unsplash

An online journal or blog

If you want to share your experiences with others then a blog is a great way to do this. You could set it to private for friends and family, or open it up and share it with the world. There are plenty of free blogging platforms, for example Blogger which is what I use, and it's easy to add texts, photos and links to the different places that you've visited.

It's easy to update anywhere as long as you have an internet connection, so you can write it on the go and add in your photos.

A shadow box display

When you get home, a shadow box display is a great way to display bulkier items like small souvenirs, maps, leaflets and tickets. You can buy a readymade frame or look for an online tutorial like this one - Ticket stub memory box tutorial - it's really easy to do.

Vacation memory jar

Either for physical items like seashells, pebbles, coins and so on, or write down memories on slips of paper then take them out to re-read, maybe on New Year's Eve. 

Wall displays and frames

You can display postcards that you've brought back in a hanging pocket postcard pockets (affiliate link) or a hanging postcard display (affiliate link). Or simply collage them into a frame or stick directly to the wall - my student bedrooms always had colourful postcards stuck all over the walls with BluTak! You could choose to display printed photographs or a mixture of photos, postcards, ticket stubs and other ephemera.

Photo credit Mick Haupt via Unsplash

Personalised travel maps

There are lots of different ways of sharing your travels using a map. For example, I've shared my cross stitch map (affiliate link) before, very much a work in progress but then so are my travel adventures!

You can also find other examples, like scratch off maps (affiliate link) or a travel destination bucket list scratch off poster (affiliate link). Alternatively you could just buy a large map and some pins to stick into the places that you have visited!

I hope that this post has given you lots of inspiration for recording those travel memories. My final tip would be to make sure that you actually go back and read through those travel journals and look through those photographs! I'm guilty of keeping all my journals stuffed in a cupboard, even though I wrote them with the intention of revisiting them. It's my intention to set aside some time with a cuppa and a biscuit and enjoy reading back through them.

Using AI to generate images for blog posts

I've been doing a lot of reading around Artificial Intelligence recently, it's a subject which fascinates me. As well as the ethics of AI, as both an online content creator and consumer I'm concerned with how AI could be used to produce content which is indistinguishable from that produced by humans. I've played around with ChatGPT to both generate blog post titles and to see what posts it would write based on those titles, and I've been impressed and I must admit a little bit in awe.  

When I'm looking for an image to illustrate a blog post then I turn to Unsplash for good quality and copyright free photographs that work with my content. The other day I was struggling to find exactly what I wanted, and I remembered reading about the AI image generator Stable Diffusion. I gave it a go and was actually really impressed with the image of a packed suitcase that it generated (the post is to be published next week, the AI image will be clearly disclosed!) so I thought I'd have a go at generating some 'stock' photographs that I could use to illustrate the sorts of things that I often write about!

I started with some crafty requests - bullet journals, art journals and a crochet blanket - and I was pleasantly surprised with the results. The text in the journals is nonsense and the blanket is a little fuzzy, but as part of a quickly skimmed blog post I think that they could pass as real photographs.

I soon discovered that anything involving text or body parts like faces or hands doesn't work well at all, and I ended up with some very creepy images. I was impressed that the tool managed the word 'blog' on the laptop, but all the hands have gone very wrong!

I found that the AI image generator coped much better with images that involved a landscape or food. The images are a little too perfect, very smooth and shiny, but I think that some of them could certainly pass as genuine photos when scrolling through a platform like Instagram!

My favourite AI generated images were these two involving books. It took a few attempts because the tool can't manage text very well so I needed to try for images taken from a distance or a little out of focus. I think that either of these two images would make a great blog post photograph, as long as you don't look too closely!

Finally one of my favourite images was one that went completely wrong. I asked for a person sitting on a sun lounger at the beach reading a book and ended up with this disturbing image!

Clearly the technology has a way to go, but I can see that it won't be long before it will be easy to generate the exact image that you are looking for to illustrate something online, especially if you are just looking for generic images. I'll be looking very carefully at photographs now, because I've started to identify the characteristics that you can look for to identify an AI image. For example differences in the textures, wobbly edges, wonky text, over saturated colours and sometimes a rather grainy feel.

I found it fascinating to play with this tool, and if you have a spare few minutes I'd recommend giving it a go, you might be surprised with how well it works! 

All these images were generated using Stable Diffusion which is currently free to use. All images created using Stable Diffusion Online are fully open source, explicitly falling under the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

I want to live inside Unsplash

Sometimes when I'm writing a blog post I don't have a good photo of my own to illustrate it, and so I turn to Unsplash. Unsplash is a fantastic website filled with high resolution photos that you can download to use for your own projects, even commercial ones, for free, without asking for permission and without the need to credit (although I always do). I've found some beautiful photos there which fit my posts perfectly, especially when I'm writing about some of my favourite topics like organisation and minimalism, reading, travel or blogging.

Photo credit Thought Catalog via Unsplash

I've spent a fair bit of time browsing photos through these categories, sometimes because I'm trying to find the perfect picture, but other times because I just really enjoy scrolling through the pictures and imagining living the lifestyle that they depict.

The other day I was sitting on a comfortable seat in my tidy garden with a hot drink in my hand and a book on my knee, and it dawned on me that for just a few seconds I was experiencing what I decided to call my own 'Unsplash moment'.

Photo credit Kyle Glenn via Unsplash

Because for me Unsplash has started to become the embodiment of a perfect life. In the world of Unsplash there are endless cups of tea, alongside notebooks laid open with a pen at the ready to fill them with ambitious plans and innermost thoughts. There are pretty things to look at while you are working, like beautiful views, well cared for houseplants, and posters with motivational quotes.

Photo credit Chris Adamus via Unsplash

The surroundings are minimalist and tasteful, mixing old and new successfully, and everything fits together perfectly to create a calm and relaxing workspace.

Photo credit Jessica Lewis via Unsplash

There is so much potential for creativity and relaxation, without the distractions of mess, clutter and general family life.

Photo credit Nicole Honeywill via Unsplash

Of course I know that the majority of photos on Unsplash are posed, and they don't represent anyone's actual real life. Maybe I'm cheating a little bit to use someone else's staged photos to portray a world that's different from my reality. Or maybe using the lovely pictures also acts as an escape from reality for the readers of my blog. I'm sure that no-one really wants to see my messy bookshelves and floors covered in Lego!

So if you see a photo on my blog that makes it look as though my life is perfect, there's a reasonably good chance that it's just a glimpse into a world that I sometimes wish I could inhabit!