Travels with a Backpack: Displaying Travel Photos

One of my favorite things to do while traveling is to take pictures. And once I get home I just can't wait to look through all of them to pick out my favorites! But what do you do once you pick out your top 20 pictures of a trip? Good question!

You can only have so many pictures of vacations on your walls. So, I've had to start coming up with creative ways to express my photographs as artwork, and not just a collection of vacation pictures. Here is one of my recent projects from pictures of elephants in Tanzania.

Photos of elephants I took in Tanzania.

I purchased a frame at Ikea a few years back (pre-peace corps) and arriving home I realized it wasn't a frame, but artwork. No offense to the person who took these fine pictures of New York, but I just wanted a cool frame for my own pictures. Off to the basement it went to await my return from Africa so I could finally fill it with the photos I've selected above. Side note: I would have just returned it, but Ikea is in downtown Atlanta and not worth the drive to return something small!

The Ikea artwork I purchased a few years ago.

Then came the hard part. Using a screw driver and pliers I have taken off the stapled backing and figured out a way to mount my pictures in the same place as the Ikea pictures. The pictures are currently being printed at Costco, so I will update you with the final picture once I'm finished!

Taking the backing off of the Ikea frame.

Right now in my bathroom I have a simple picture frame filled with some of my favorite pictures from Australia and New Zealand. This is the easiest thing to do with your favorite pictures, especially since you only have to print 4x6 pictures.

My frame with Australia and New Zealand pictures.

I also have a collection of frames in my bedroom from pictures taken in Asia and America in 2008. I like this collection, but the frames are just cheap black plastic and they easily tilt and wind up all crooked, like in the picture. For now I like having the pictures, but one day I will collect nicer frames for a grand collection!

Collection of pictures in my room.

For Father's Day this year we gave my dad canvas prints (from Costco it was a great deal) of three pictures taken during our safari. We had a blank wall in our foyer that needed some artwork and these canvases proved a great addition! The canvases are 18x24, which we thought would be plenty big, but the wall is so large we could have actually gone bigger.