Travel Photos: Which ones do you keep forever?

I tried a new approach during my month-long trip to Europe. I cut my picture-taking to one quarter of the amount I usually snap. Why? In the same way I bought very few souvenirs because I have no room for them in my house, I determined that if I only took pictures I knew I would keep, I’d return home a happier traveler.

I got the idea from my brother who is seventy years old and has dutifully taken lots of pictures on his many travels. He told me that he had eliminated almost every picture without humans in the frame. The people (whom he knew or who were crucial in the picture) made the photo valuable to him.

How many pictures of the outside or inside of a church does a person need? Do I want more than one picture of the Coliseum? Can I distinguish this cute narrow street in Italy from the hundreds of others I’ve taken? Why keep pictures of crowds of people or statues that hold no meaning for me. I admit: on one trip, I took snaps of the backside of every statue I came upon. Silly. Those photos are gone.

It’s true that swiping through hundreds of pictures I took on a certain adventure recalled the fun (and challenges) I had on that trip. But I could have the same experience viewing ten carefully chosen pictures to represent the high points of my cruise around, say, the Greek Islands. Plus, when I show only ten pictures to my friends, I’m less likely to bore them.

This trip I concentrated on placing memorable people in front of amazing sites, never the site alone or the people alone. If I took a picture without people, it was because I saw something frameable to capture. Below, some pictures that are keepers.