Do You Have the Feeling People Zone-Out When You're Sharing Vacation Photos?

They probably are, because you're sharing too many!

Whether you are sharing memories from your phone or on your television, I have found 5-10 mins to be the maximum time of sharing your vacation photos before you (yes YOU) start draining the energy out of the room.

"For every 100 photos, 10 might be good" - some guy I used to know

Step 1: Immediately delete the ones you know are bad. I'm referring to the ones that are blurry, eyes are closed, finger is in the way, someone in a bright green shirt walked into frame, etc. You might think some of the flawed photos are good, but they are not; and your audience does not want to see them.

Step 2: Most of your photos are probably already organized loosly by theme, and you don't even realize it. For example, looking at your photo roll, your first group of pictures might be at a park, the second group at the pool, the third group on a boat ride, and so on.

"Um... they are organized by time" - I know, work with me.

For each "theme", pick out the top 3 photos. Usually your photo browser will have some sort of tagging or rating option. For example, in Mac OS Photos, you tag your top 3s as "green", or on an iPhone, mark them as favorites.

Step 3: This is the hard part. Out of 100 photos, you should have now tagged about 1/3rd of all photos taken. Let's say you consider 33 of these your good photos. Now it's time to tag again! For each group of photos, probably 1 photo will not only "tell a story", but also generate conversation from you. Pick the 1 photo that meets this criteria. This allows you to change this conversation:

"This pic is Dave at the pool"

"This pic is Dave eating a hotdog at the pool"

"Oh, this pic is funny, this is Dave jumping in the pool with his hot dog!"

"Here's a pic of Dave walking away from the pool. Look, he's sunburnt"

to this...

"Now here's Dave jumping in the pool with a hot dog". Followed by story-time about Dave and pool with no additional photos. The end.

Step 4: You're now down to about 13 photos and you hate me. Hate me a little more and go through the 13 photos one more time. This time, remove anything that only has interest to you and not your audience. Maybe there's that 1 photo that reminds you of the single-best romantic time of the entire trip. That's not one to share with the neighbors. That's for you. Remove it.

You've now created an album of your best photos, you can quickly share with friends over a glass of wine, your audience is engaged and asking you questions, and no one falls asleep!