Photography has come a long way over the years in terms of accessibility. It used to be something that was fairly costly. Buying and developing film was not cheap. These days, however, you can snap photos without spending much at all. Get your hands on a digital camera or be even cheaper and take photos with your cell phone. Upload them to your computer and store them there instead of paying to print them out.

What I really love about all of these changes is that people who are enjoying budget travel can take really good pictures on a budget. A look at some of the best budget travel photos on the web will prove this. For example, check out iamdpw.com. This is the budget travel photo collection of a traveler who has been all around the world. He keeps things cheap but he sees lots of cool stuff in affordable destinations. His pictures show off many of the amazing things that I’d love to see on my own travels, like temples, villages and fall leaves.

Or head over to funkytraveller.com and check out the photo galleries there. This is a website put together by several travelers who engage in low-cost travel like backpacking. Their adventures look like a whole lot of fun. Plus the pictures they take are really great. In particular I like the albums from Dan Barlow and Andy Webb. They capture a lot of cool details that I myself wouldn’t necessarily notice on a trip.

It’s also fun to take a look at the photos on the websites for Budget Travel magazines and blogs. Budget Travel, itself, and also Let’s Go Travel are two good sites that offer a lot of information about traveling at a low cost. These sites have professional writers and researchers and from the looks of it also must have professional photographers. I certainly can’t take pictures of this high quality but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy looking at them!

And finally, of course, there’s Flickr. There are so many Flickr photo pools for budget travel fans that I won’t bother to list them here. Suffice to say that I find it easy to spend hours on the site sharing photos and thoughts about photos with fellow budget travelers! I think looking at other people’s pictures of cheap travel makes you remember to enjoy the little things about your own trips regardless of whether or not you take a camera with you when you go.

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• Frugal travel section. There is a section of this blog devoted to providing information about frugal travel. Some of the tips here are pretty obvious to us budget travelers. However, others are a bit unique or have their own slant on them. I like this section.
• Great insights. For example, a fairly recent post discussed the way that the family experienced driving through Texas. It was all about how the highways there would be a benefit to Minnesota if they were transplanted there. This is a bit of a strange insight for a travel blog. I like it.
• The family travels with four young children. The kids are all under the age of seven. I just find this to be totally inspirational. It’s tough to travel with kids (although it’s also wonderful). It’s tough to figure out budgeting for traveling with a family of this size. I love to see real people who are making it happen.
• They go to off-the-wall places. This isn’t one of those family travel blogs where you’re going to read about Disneyland in every other post. This family goes to off-the-beaten-path museums and farms and other attractions. It’s really enjoyable to read about these things. And it inspires my own travel scrapbook with ideas for future travel plans!
• Nice, informative pictures. The posts are supplemented with photos of the places that the family visits. These aren’t high-quality amazing photographs but instead are revealing travel photos that are clearly in the family’s own albums.
• Very down-to-earth. Ultimately I just really love the tone of this travel blog. It’s very down-to-earth. I can relate to it. And I feel like I’m getting to know the author through her posts which is what I think makes a really great blog. This makes it fun to read.

What’s your favorite family travel blog?

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• Great deals. I want to use a website that will offer the best hotel deals and best airfare.
• Ease-of-use. I definitely want to make sure that any website that I use is going to be one that is really user-friendly. No glitches; no tough-to-read text, etc.
• Lots of information and reviews. I don’t just want to know about the latest hotel specials; I want to know about what makes each hotel special!
• Personality. I’d like to see the personality shine through the site as I’m reading it. This makes it easy to get a feel for whether or not a recommended deal would be right for me.
• Variety. A website that offers the same deals over and over again is boring. A website that offers new stuff all of the time is going to keep me interested.

It doesn’t matter to me whether a travel website is an independent site or one that’s produced by a chain company. What matters to me is the content and the quality of that content. I want to check out travel websites that are going to really be useful to me. Let’s face it; we all have a limited amount of time that we’re able to spend online. I don’t want to waste mine on travel websites that aren’t the best websites.

One of the websites that I’m really excited about right now is the Choice Hotels website. This website was already a good website by the above standards. However it’s recently undergone a site redesign that makes it even more appealing to me as a reader. Features of the new site include:

• New advanced search bar. They’ve made it a lot easier to search for good hotel deals close to the destinations that you want to visit.
• Rate comparison tool. I love that they’ve made it possible to easily compare the costs and features of different rooms that are available. You can easily look at photos of the room as well as package deals that might make it cheaper.
• Look for deals within certain interests. A cool new feature lets you look for the best deals in certain categories such as romantic vacations. That makes for easy planning!

What do you think?

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