What’s worse than having your things stolen when you travel? Losing all the pictures you took during your trip.

Now, I don’t know about the rest of you internet friends and strangers, but I have a problem when it comes to travel photography. I have lost pictures from just about every trip I’ve ever gone on. The first time I went to Ireland, back in 2008, I misplaced or just never got a bunch of my little yellow Kodak cameras developed. I left the Kodak camera that I used to take all my pictures at Abbey Road the first time I was in London on the Tube. These mistakes haunt me to this day. What silly faces and monumental experiences have been lost to the Time Gods?

The latest catastrophe happened this past January, when I cracked the screen of my Samsung Galaxy S4, and lost access to all the photos I had on it. Since then I have been trying everything in my power to recover the photos from my phone. Thankfully, I’d saved most of them to my Google Photos account, but not all of them–not the pictures from Newgrange.

This time, I was lucky and last Monday I was able to scavenge the photos off the phone, but life is not always so forgiving. Since then, I have become obsessive with saving my photos in multiple locations. Especially now that I’ve started this new journey as a travel blogger and it’s become oh so important to keep my photos safe from the photo-stealing gremlins.

I don’t know why I have this curse. I’ve never had my belongings stolen during a trip, because I’m crazy about keeping it all in travel safe bags, and always within eye line. I carry backpacks on my chest like they’re my children. I keep a hand over the top of my purse when I walk down the streets. I carry locks for Hostel trips. I guess I had to have bad luck with something, and my photos is where it hit.

Every now and then I think the technology we have for photography on our phones is a curse rather than a blessing, because now I take so many photos, and I want to keep all of them. Back in the olden days I just took a few pictures, and developed them all. I’ve never lost a picture I had developed, but perhaps because I had to pay to have them brought to life, I treat those photos with more care than my phones.

Fingers crossed for my next trip that I don’t drop my phone, or lose it on a train.

Have you ever lost all your photos? What do you do to keep them safe? What are your favorite storage apps? I’ve tried just about all of them–Dropbox, Google Photos, One Drive–is there something out there that I’m missing? Let me know in the comments below.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Americans!

Just a gentle reminder that I’ll be going on a fun winter trip in just over a week, so if you want to see all the shenanigans I’ll be getting in to make sure to follow my instagram: LittleSliceofBri. If you visit it via this blog make sure to let me know in the comments!

Thanks For Reading!