Interesting things to do with Travel Pictures

I went to Europe for 6 weeks and came home with 3,200+ digital pictures. Somehow, I wanted to display or show off some of my favorites. I'm no photographer and I'm certainly not that creative, but here are some of the things I did or thought of doing with my pictures and some websites I think are cool.

In the Danish Design Center in Copenhagen, they have a little shop which is geared towards travel and other things like that. I saw these things called Fotoclips, but didn't buy them. They're neat little plastic things that connect photos so you can make a photo wall or even a lampshade or box or pretty much anything your head can imagine. When I got home, I bought some.

What I did was went through my pictures and I picked about 200 of my favorites. My 2 favorites, I blew up to 8x10. My next 15 or so favorites I got 5x7s and the rest of the ones I thought were good I got regular 4x6. I used Snapfish for my prints as they offer good deals on shipping and have great prices when you order a lot of prints. I also like them because you can get matte finish, which I got for all of my prints. I'd also recommend signing up with Shutterfly and some other picture printing sites - I got an email from Shutterfly not long after I signed up offering a free 11x14 collage - so I could put many of my pictures together (I did 16 little squares, but there were many options), and only had to pay the $2.99 shipping - great deal, and it came out lovely. These companies and others also offer tons of things you can do with your pictures, from prints to posters to cool things like coffee mugs and calendars and the list just goes on and on.

A couple other sites related to travel pictures I like are:

• Photojojo - they have a great little store with fun products, lots of really cool tips and other photo links
• Flickr - already in my list of Cool Travel links, Flickr is my favorite site for storing photos. You can put them in sets, control the access with Guest Passes, make collections, slideshows, etc. Check, because your ISP might include a free pro account! Mine (AT&T Yahoo! DSL) does, and that gives you unlimited storage!
• IrfanView - a great FREE photo editing program to organize, edit, clean up, rename, and do whatever else you need to do to your pictures
• Gorillapod - it's a bendy tripod for getting those great night scenery shots in weird situations. It comes in various sizes depending on your camera. I don't have it yet, but I hear it's great and I definitely won't be taking another trip without one
• DPReview - a great site for incredibly in-depth reviews on digital cameras. Has a lot of technical stuff but also shows samples and discusses the basics to help people of all levels of experience and knowledge decide whether a particular camera is right for them.
• HP Digital Photography Center - surprisingly, HP has an entire mini-site for digital photography, with tons of tips and even free online classes with message boards that cover the basics. Site and classes include lots of tips for us travel photographers too and a free program called HP Photosmart Essential!
  
• IKEA - my favorite store in the whole world, they have a huge selection of inexpensive and interesting framing options.
  

Here's the wall of pictures I put above my couch with pictures from my trip. They're in chronological order, which makes it literally a mural of my trip (click for larger image):