Thursday, January 1, 2015

Keeping A Lifelong Travel Log

If you have a Baby Book for souvenirs of your baby, you can create a page for your child's or grandchild's travels.

If you want to write your own life story, you can make a log of your own travels.

What if you are trying to create a travel log for yourself or a relative. Where do you start? How do you fill in the blanks?



On the back of this black and white photo my late father had written San Marino.

1 CURENT YEAR Start your log with this year and work backwards.
2 All your computer photos and digital photos are likely to have the year.
3 Label all your holiday photos with the year.
4 Wedding photos are likely to be matched with places and people and dates.
5 Note yourself, your parents, friends, children on the caption of all photos. You will remember your parents and grandparents on your wedding photos. After your parents have died, your grandchildren might not be able to tell who is who. Even yourself and your brothers and sisters as children can be hard to recognise. I can't tell my husband's baby photos from his brother's. Nor my mother-in-law when she was in her twenties from her younger sister.
5 b Add the dates.
5 c Add the places.
6 BIRTHDAYS Note birthdays celebrated home and abroad.
7 LOCATIONS
The location of your home country might not seem worthy of note. However, if your children emigrate overseas, nearby or far away, and marry somebody who lives overseas, the photos of their respective parents and inlaws' homelands will then be different and interesting and remarkable.
8 PASSPORTS
Old passports will show the dates of travel. After my late uncle died, I found his old passports. They confirmed the exact dates he took ships from the UK to the USA and back. Also when/whether he was on a troop ship and when/whether he was working as a musician.


9 If you have the year a photo was taken, and the birthdate of the person in the photo, you can then add the age of the person in the photo. So I know that a photo my father took of Venice, with myself in the foreground, shows me age 12. Some people would need a photo labelled with the exact month. But I know that my mother was age 46. I was born in Spring. My mother was born mid-summer. The holiday photos were probably taken in the school holidays in July-August, after both birthdays.
10 Black and white photos can be coloured with a programme you can find on the internet. You can add skin tones and eye colour from a palette of options. Then trees can be green, skies blue, public buildings and landmarks such as castles and churches and cathedrals can be coloured as they are nowadays or as they were years ago.

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