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Tauck Group Photo

TravelGuy

On our February Best of Hawaii trip, I was surprised that we did not gather for a group photo. Our Tauck Director said that they don’t do that anymore. I thought that was just for this trip. But just today MCD mentioned that there was no group photo taken on a recent trip. Is that the case for all trips now?
I really like the photo to help me remember those in the group.

Comments

Claudia Sails

Nope, they didn't do it for either of our tours in Europe last fall. Our group in France - all 9 of us - did our own. Fortunately one of our number was very good with photoshop so he added himself in.

JohnS

On our recent Italy trip the tour director took a group photo and emailed it to everyone. Not professional photography but good enough.

MikeHenderson

On our last tour, same thing - the tour director took a picture of the group and gave us all an electronic copy. When Tauck used to do group pictures, I used to always ask the photographer to send me an electronic copy so I could put it on my blog. Only one photographer ever sent me an electronic copy.

For me, the paper copy picture is useless.

JanP

Our TD on our recent Israel-Jordan tour had one of our guides take a photo of our group and sent it to us electronically. It was informal, but it is a good memory of all with whom we traveled. I always put together a hard-cover photo journal using a third party service on my Mac, and in the years when we only received a paper photo of our group, I would take a photo of the photo so I could include it in my photo book.

Smiling Sam

MikeHenderson - I used to always ask the photographer to send me an electronic copy so I could put it on my blog. Only one
photographer ever sent me an electronic copy.

For me, the paper copy picture is useless.

Wouldn't a good quality scanner solve this problem?

British

Only once did the TD annotate the photo with everyone’s name before he gave it out, so useful after a few weeks have gone by.

MikeHenderson

@Smiling Sam Yes, I could scan the picture, but not until I got home. I do my blog while we travel so I prefer to get the electronic copy shortly after the picture is taken. Also, the quality of a picture scanned from a picture is not as good as the original image.

Since most people have an iPhone, the TD could AirDrop the images to us. Not just the group picture, but other pictures he took. For example, on the Morocco trip, he took pictures of most of us on a camel and AirDropped them to the appropriate person. Much, much nicer than waiting for a paper copy. People don't do a lot of sharing of paper pictures these days. They post electronic copies on social media.

The other problem was the sharing of email addresses on paper. On our Hawaii trip, the TD gave us the email addresses of everyone who agreed to share their email address. What would have been MUCH better is if she had sent us the addresses electronically. It's too easy to make a transcription error when entering an email address. Many email addresses are somewhat complex with numbers. Just one error makes the address unreachable.

BKMD

Since most people have an iPhone

Bite your tongue. i refuse to drink the Apple Koolaid!

Yeah, no group pic on our recent Hawaii trip and no volutary email list, either.

OurTravels34

The app “photoscan” takes really great pictures of a picture. You can then easily resend to others as well as improving the picture in several ways.

MCD

I think that Tauck stopped doing the official group photos because of Covid. Can't keep the safe distance! On my Hawaii tour last August (my first since Covid hit), the TD would not participate in the group photo that one of the guests organized. Our TD in Portugal happily joined the photos.

MikeHenderson

OurTravels34
The app “photoscan” takes really great pictures of a picture. You can then easily resend to others as well as improving the picture in several ways.

No matter how you slice it, a copy of a paper photo will be degraded compared to the original digital image.

The printing process to put the photo on paper degrades the quality of the image, and a photo of that paper image degrades the image even further.

While you can edit the picture, it would be far superior to edit the original digital image.

OurTravels34

Back in the day and before the end of a trip, you would automatically receive a list of people who attended a trip along with other information such as their addresses and email. Not so much anymore in this day and age. Once when we were traveling many years ago, my hubby accidentally left a very nice suit in the closet. Obviously the tour company knew what room we were in, but didn’t contact us. When I later inquired why wouldn’t they contact us so that the suit could be retuned, it was explained in a very delicate manner that sometimes men don’t travel with their wives! It was blatantly said just like that. Apparently I’m too naive, and it took me a moment to catch on that the hotels are protecting themselves. I know now, to always check my husband’s closet when we travel. It has happened more than once that he had left an item.

British

We were told about a couple traveling together who were lovers. An email list was given to everybody and the man received an email from someone on the tour and his wife saw it. She tried to sue Tauck and that’s y why they don’t give out emails without permission.
.

MikeHenderson

I think it's just good manners that you don't give out someone's email address without their permission.

One thing that always irritates me is when someone sends an email to a group of people and puts the email addresses in the "To:" line instead of the "Bcc:" line. If you put them in the "To:" line, everyone sees all of the addresses. If you put them in the "Bcc:" line, the receiver only sees their address and the address of the sender.

It's good manners to use the "Bcc:" line when sending email to a group of people.

OurTravels34

British: I remember that story and it crested a lawsuit. At least that’s that was told to me. It’s probably true.
Mike: I use bcc alm the time.

AlanS

I have no problem taking a photo of a group photo- sometimes the quality isn't all that great, but we don't frame them or do much with them anyway- at most we include the digital photo of the photo in a slide show for our family and friends.

In Petra, during J&E in March, Hosni who has a special relationship with Tauck and has arranged the camel rides for them for years, had individual photos taken of the camel riders- my wife did it, I was off in the hills- but a fee was charged if you wanted it. In Egypt, we had a pay-as-you-go camel ride/photo op on the west side of the pyramids. The photog also took an impromptu group photo.- we could buy them or not.

During our Greece trip, we had an arranged, formal, group photo taken in front of the Library of Celsus in Ephesus. It was not listed in the daily go sheet like in year's past. It was smaller than typical group photos of the past also- a 6" X 8" overall composite of a 5" X 7" group photo and, along two edges, thumbnails of Ephesus features. Though the quality wasn't the best, it was free. It may have been paid for out of the TD's lagniappe funds.

TravelGuy

Wouldn’t it just be easier for Tauck to charge a few dollars more to take a group photo. If you don’t want to be in the picture just step to the side!

British

Charge a few dollars more! We always had a group photo taken. I assume Tauck stopped it for Covid reasons and then to save money. It must have cost a fair amount of money to have a professional photographer arrive at a certain place, take the photo, run and develop it and get it back to the group before the tour moves on…..to me it’s not worth it. Nice to have but not a deal breaker and yes, a digital version is better these days anyway as I would think most people do a processed momentous photo book rather than a scrapbook if anything at all. It’s so easy to organize these photo yourself and share with others or take photos of the people you really get on with. For all we know, we could be seeing a wonderful nearby attraction instead, I know that would be a prefer option for me.
I think the official group photos are history, same with the green books, Tauck just can’t be making the money they used to, tour groups are far from full and a good number are still not running.

kfnknfzk

I agree with MikeHenderson regarding distributing personal information without the express consent of all parties. The same holds true when it comes to taking photos on tour. I can recall when it was customary to ask permission first before taking photos of other individuals. We always ask first and advise that the photos will be for our own personal scrapbook and will never be published elsewhere. It's just common courtesy from a bygone era.

MikeHenderson

@kfnknfzk If you had to get express permission of everyone on the tour before taking pictures, it would make life very difficult. When people sign up for a tour, they know that a lot of pictures will be taken, and they will wind up in some number of them. As long as those pictures are not used for commercial purposes, I think it's okay to take the pictures.

In many cities (like London) you will be photographed many, many times by the government as you walk through the city. People just cannot expect that on a tour no pictures will be taken of them.

British

Somewhere on the Tauck paperwork, it certainly said at one time that if you don’t want your photos taken by Tauck you should say so.

kfnknfzk

I am referring to when people walk up to your table unexpectedly wanting to take your photo. No "hello", no "may I". I think it is quite rude when a camera is shoved in my face. Yes, I certainly know that I will inadvertently wind up in photos. That's not what I was referring to.