Even if you aren’t a professional photographer, saving your photos and videos from your trip is essential if you want to keep those visual memories.It’s infuriating to lose all your digital stuff due to a broken laptop or tablet, so make sure you save photos while traveling.Here’s how.

Hard Copy

An external hard drive is a great way to back up all your photos and videos.If it takes too much space, consider getting a bunch of SD cards with lots of space (64 GB ones are great).The added bonus is that you can easily (and cheaply) mail the SD cards with photo and video footage to yourself back home, ensuring you don’t lose or damage them on the road.

Cloud

Google Drive,DropBox, andSmugMugare all great places to store your photos and videos.SmugMug has the added bonus of allowing you to have public galleries and sell your images should you choose to.Whichever cloud storage you pick, just make sure you back your photos frequently – daily, weekly, or at the very least, monthly.It’s just a matter of habit.

Social Media and Email

This should only be a last resort as social media shrinks the images, but you can upload photos and videos to Facebook or Instagram for safekeeping.They will be reduced in size, but at least you’ll still have them.If you don’t want to post them publicly, just adjust your privacy settings, and you’re good to go.

Emailing photos and videos to yourself is another emergency option.It’s not ideal, but if the battery is about to die and you just need to quickly save a couple of images, email them to yourself.Unlike Facebook, the email will not reduce the size or the resolution of the photos.

How do you keep your photos safe while traveling?