Guest uploads
Turn forty camera rolls into one download
One link, one page, one tap. What a guest has to do to get their photographs to you — and why every step you remove is another twenty pictures you get back.
Ask yourself what the last photograph you received from a guest actually took them. They opened their camera roll, found the ones from your event, selected, chose a delivery method, typed your name into the right field, waited for an upload, and did it again for the set they missed. Five steps, each one a chance to think 'later' and mean never.
The whole craft of collecting photographs from guests is step removal. Not persuasion, not reminders — arithmetic on friction.
Count the steps in each method
- Open camera roll, choose, share, choose mail, wait, type address, write subject, send. Eight, and the attachments are usually the largest thing they have ever mailed.
- Group chat
- Choose, attach, wait for compression, send, repeat per photo unless they accept a wall of thumbnails. Five, and you get them out of order with no names.
- Cloud folder
- Install or sign in, create or accept a folder, upload. Three for someone fluent, and eight with a password reset for everyone else.
- AirDrop or a cable
- One, but only for the people standing next to you holding the same phone.
- A guest upload page
- Scan, choose, name, send. Four, of which two are things they were doing anyway, and the naming is what gets you the photograph back.
What the guest page is allowed to be
It is one page, and it is deliberately shorter than the page you would build for yourself. The guest is not the customer; you are. The page exists to convert a photograph in somebody's pocket into a file in your collection, and it does that by asking almost nothing.
They scan the code
Camera app, no third-party scanner. The address opens in the browser they already use, on the device in their hand.
They read one line from you
The welcome message, with the occasion and the hosts named on the page so they know they are in the right place. This is the moment a guest decides whether to bother.
They choose files
Photos and clips in the same picker, as many as they like in one submission, from the album their phone already organised.
They give a name
One field. Guests who send more than once in the same twelve hours are not asked again — the page already knows who is typing, and says so, which is the difference between a form and a conversation.
They press send and leave
A receipt tells them it arrived. No account to verify, no app to open twice, nothing to remember.
Every field you ask a guest to fill is a guest who does not fill it. The name is the only field worth the cost.
Why the name matters more than you think
An unattributed photograph is a small mystery you will never solve. A named one is a person you can go back to: the cousin who took forty pictures nobody asked for, the friend who has the video of the speech you cannot find, the neighbour who photographed the setup you were too busy to see. Attribution is the reason a collection is worth more than a folder of files, and it is the one request guests do not mind — they get credit for the photograph they were proud of.
- Put the code somewhere with a queue in front of it. A bar, a dessert table, the door on the way out.
- Ask the one enthusiastic guest to tell the table. Peer instruction beats a host's announcement every time.
- Send the address as text the following morning to the people who were on their phone all evening anyway.
- Name the gap when you remind: 'nobody has sent anything from the ceremony' gets pictures; 'send your photos' gets silence.
- Let it go at the margin. A collection with two hundred photographs from sixty guests is a success, not a shortfall.
Privacy, from the guest's side
A guest handing over photographs is handing over something personal, and the page should be honest about what happens next. They are sending to one named event's collection, not publishing to a platform. The address is not listed anywhere and is kept out of search engines. Whether they can see other people's contributions is your setting, not their default. And whatever the host downloads is what the photographs become — nothing is quietly squeezed down to save someone storage.
Guests never need an account, at any tier
There is no version of this product where a guest registers. The only thing that changes between plans is how much the collection takes and how long it stays up.
What each plan includesThe fields that make a guest put the phone down
Every field on an upload page is a reason to stop. The list below is short because the honest answer is that a guest needs to give almost nothing in order to hand over a photograph.
Ask this and contributions drop
- An email address before the first upload.
- A password, or a verification link they have to open on a second device.
- A relationship to the host, a table number, a phone number.
- Permission to show their name to other guests, gathered as a checkbox.
- A choice between photo and video before they have picked a file.
- A consent wall of legal text on a page a guest opens for twenty seconds.
This is enough
- Their name, once, in one field.
- A file picker that takes photographs and clips together.
- One sentence from the host explaining where the pictures go.
- A receipt that says it arrived.
- Silence for the next twelve hours: the page remembers who is typing and does not ask again.
The name is the one field that pays for itself. Everything else is a cost a guest pays so that you can collect data you will not use.
The three moments a guest actually uploads
Sitting down
Two minutes with nothing to do
The meal has not arrived, the speeches have not started, and the phone is already in the hand. A guest who notices the stand here sends what they took on the way in: the venue, the table, the outfit. This is where the first contributions come from, and it is worth having something to show them by then.
Just after taking a photograph
The only moment with real momentum
Somebody has just captured the toast, the dance, the candle being blown out. The file is at the top of their recents and the event is still happening. Ask now and they send three pictures without thinking; ask tomorrow and they cannot find them.
The next morning
The slow, useful tail
Coffee, a clear head, and a camera roll full of photographs they had time to look at. Late uploads are often the best ones, because the guest chose rather than grabbed. This is the window the reminder reaches, and the reason a collection should stay open for days.
From their phone to your archive
Worth knowing, because it is what makes the promise of full-size photographs true rather than a marketing line.
The file is read as it sits on the phone
Whatever the camera made — a large still, a moving clip — is what leaves the device. Nothing is squeezed on the way out to make the upload lighter.
A preview is drawn while they wait
The small square the gallery grid needs is produced in the browser on the guest's own phone. If the browser cannot decode the file, the upload still goes ahead and the gallery shows a labelled tile instead.
It lands against the collection, with the name
The submission is attached to the event and to the person who sent it, which is what lets you find the owner of a photograph later.
It shows where the host allowed it to
With approval on, the file waits until the host accepts it. With the gallery hidden, it never shows on the guest page at all and still arrives in the collection.
It comes back as the same file
The archive is built from the stored originals, and rejected submissions are left out. What you download is what your guests sent.
For the guest who does not trust the code
There is always one. Somebody at the table will look at a QR code, assume it is a scam or a marketing funnel, and put their phone away. You will not convert them with an argument, but you can remove the reason.
Say whose collection it is
The page opens with the hosts' names and the occasion, printed on the stand as well. A code that leads to 'Amelia and Tom, 12 September' is obviously not a funnel; a code that leads to a logo is.
Put a plain address beside it
The stand carries the web address as text, so the sceptical guest can type it later, on their own terms, from anywhere. This is also the version that works for the guest whose phone camera will not focus on a small print.
Let somebody else do it first
Watching the person next to them scan, send and see their photograph appear on the wall is worth more than any reassurance you can offer. This is the argument for having the slideshow running before the room is full.
Accept the refusal
One guest out of a hundred will send nothing, and pressing the point makes the page feel like a demand rather than an invitation. The photographs you have are the ones people chose to give.
How many photographs to ask for
Ask for everything and guests send nothing, because scrolling a camera roll to choose forty files is a job. The polite, effective ask is a small one: five or six of the pictures they took today, the ones they would have shown somebody in person. It converts the request from work into a favour that takes forty seconds.
- What to ask the room for
- A handful per guest. Sixty guests asking for six each is a collection of three or four hundred files, which is a full evening of photographs from every angle and every table.
- What to ask the enthusiastic few for
- The friend who shot two hundred frames is the one person to ask for everything. Say so privately, after, and name what you are hoping for — the speeches, the dance floor, the setup.
- What to stop asking for
- Duplicate frames of a moment already covered. The plan's allowance is the real ceiling, and a collection that fills with the same toast from nine phones is a collection that runs out of room before the cake.
Questions about guest uploads
Can a guest send photos from a laptop as well as a phone?
Yes. The address is an ordinary web page, so it opens on a desktop too. Most guests use a phone because that is where the photographs are, but the morning-after contribution from a laptop is common and costs you nothing to allow.
Do guests see each other's photographs?
Only if you leave the public gallery switched on. Turn it off and the page is upload-only, which is what most hosts choose for a surprise and what corporate hosts choose for control.
What happens if a guest sends something you do not want?
With approval on, it never appears anywhere until you accept it, and rejected files are left out of the download. With approval off you can still remove it from the dashboard; approval is the option that saves you the job.
Can the same guest send twice?
Yes, and they are not asked for their name again within twelve hours. Contributions from the same person simply accumulate in the one collection.
Is there a limit per submission?
Guests can send several files at once rather than one at a time, and the binding limits are the ones on the collection: how many photographs and clips the plan holds, and its storage.
Can a guest upload from abroad?
Yes, and it is one of the better uses of the link. Somebody who could not come can send a message or a photograph from their own kitchen, and it lands in the same collection as everything from the room — which is usually the thing that makes them feel included.
What if the venue wifi is bad?
Photographs are the size they are, so a weak connection slows an upload rather than losing it, and a guest can always send later from home. Hosts running a large event with a slideshow usually put the address in the group message as well, so the contribution does not depend on one signal.
Do guests get told what happened to their photographs?
They get a receipt that the submission arrived, and the host's own mail tells them how the collection is filling. Nothing about a guest's file is kept secret from the host, and nothing is published anywhere without the host's settings allowing it.
Give your guests four taps instead of eight steps
Open a collection, print the stands, and let the photographs come to you while the event is still happening.
Event photo sharing
Put one link on the tables and let everyone contribute.
Create a collection, print the table stands, and the photographs your guests took are waiting for you the morning after. Guests never install anything and never make an account.