Although in an ideal world we’d all be off on a gap year for the full twelve months of the year, every year, the reality is that opportunities for travelling are in practice few and far between. And even when we do get the chance to head abroad to see the sights and meet new people, most of us don’t actually go for a full gap-year sized trip. For every person who spends a whole or most of a gap year travelling, there are probably at least half a dozen people whose lifetime travel experiences (not counting your standard holidays) will amount to between one and a handful of trips of no more than a couple of months’ duration.

There’s one clear implication to this: those magical memories you’ll generate off the back of your awesome experiences abroad will be in short supply. So you’d better not let them slip away.

This, unfortunately, is something that all too many people do. They want to hold onto that freedom and fun that they felt, but they’ve got nothing physical that really helps keep those memories alive. It’s only a couple of years down the line that they discover that collecting and curating your travel memories requires an effort that goes beyond adding a bunch of people you’ll never see again on Facebook and taking some snaps with your phone’s camera.

So if you’re about to head away for some summer travelling, or will be beginning a gap year later in the year, try this tip to make sure that when you’re stuck in an office on a rainy day ten years from now it’ll be easier to remember what’s going to be some very special moments in your life.

Take photos with people in, not just places and things

Although digital photography is beyond any shadow of a doubt a Good Thing, it does have a couple of downsides. And foremost among them is this: it makes everyone think they’re a naturally gifted professional photographer in the making. And this leads them to spending inordinately long periods of time and an inordinately large amount of memory-card space attempting to take artsy shots of market-stall owners and their wares, or reflections of sunsets on a lake, or the twinkling lights of a night-time city skyline.

We’re not saying that you shouldn’t take any photos like this–go ahead, fill your boots–but what you’ll almost certainly find when you look back at such photos in a few years’ time (if you bother to do so at all) is that a) they look like lots of other photos you’ve seen elsewhere; and b) they don’t capture your fond memories at all.

There’s a simple reason for this: they don’t contain the faces of the people you befriended and bonded with while you were away. These are the people you need to keep in your photos. By this we don’t mean just stick to shots of crazy nights out; we mean put the bulk of your creative photographic endeavours into capturing the essence of why making friends while travelling is one of the most uplifting things a person can do.