By occasion
The same mechanism, eight different occasions
What to ask for, where to put the code and who to chase afterwards, for a reunion, a birthday, a school play, a service, a match day, a retirement, a baby shower and a conference.
How-to walkthroughs and honest comparisons of the options.
An occasion changes three things about collecting photographs: what the room is already holding, who is standing where, and what the material is for afterwards. A reunion produces old photographs on old phones and a great deal of video of children. A school play produces ninety near-identical frames of the same hall from three rows of seats. A conference produces almost nothing unless the link is on the slide. The mechanism is identical in all three, so this page is only about the parts that differ — what to ask for by name, where the printed code goes, and which individuals are worth chasing the next week.
A family reunion, where the photographs are old
Ask for the photographs on the phone, and the ones in the box
The material that makes a reunion is the photograph from 1987 that somebody's mother kept. A guest can photograph a print with their camera and upload the same file as the selfie, so the collection holds both without a scanner in the house.
Put the code where three generations stand
The barbecue, the door, and the table where the older relatives sit. Somebody who cannot work a code will absolutely have it read out to them by a grandchild, which is the best part of this at a reunion.
Record the people who tell the stories
Forty seconds of an uncle describing the farm in his own words is worth more than four hundred photographs. Written and filmed messages sit on the same page as the gallery, so nobody has to choose between them.
Give the collection to whoever keeps the family archive
There is always one person, and they are usually the one who printed the seating plan. Send them the download as well as the address, because the copies that survive are the ones two households hold.
A birthday, from a first one to an eightieth
The cake is the whole collection window
Every phone in the room goes up for the candles and comes down afterwards. Ask for the cake, the presents and the faces, in that order, and the gallery fills itself between courses.
For a child's party, ask the parents, not the child
Contributors are adults standing at the boundary of the garden with excellent cameras. A line in the pickup message does more than any card on a table, because nobody at a children's party sits down.
For a milestone, ask the people who are far away
A fortieth or an eightieth is mostly a roll call of people who could not come. Send the link a fortnight ahead and the absent relatives record first, before the room has even gathered.
Keep one address for the whole weekend
Reunions, weekends away and parties that run into a Sunday all belong in one collection. Two addresses is how half the material ends up in a place nobody looks for it.
A school play, a sports day, a church anniversary
- Send the link to the class group
- For a school performance the adults filming are not at a table and will not read a stand. The message that already goes round the parents is the channel that works, with one printed card at the door for the grandparents.
- Expect ninety frames of the same pitch
- A sports day produces enormous volume and heavy duplication. Buy the extra upload allowance before the morning, and sort the duplicates that evening while you can still remember which ones are your own child.
- A service or an anniversary needs two askers
- The person with the microphone and the person who reads the notices afterwards. A congregation is a room of people who will do exactly what one familiar voice asks them to do, and nothing else.
- Decide who may browse
- A school collection full of other people's children should be upload-only, and the same goes for anything involving a congregation you have not met. It is a switch on the settings and it costs nothing to set before the link circulates.
- Hand the set back the same week
- A class photograph set, a match-day archive, a church anniversary record — the value of these decays fast. The download and one message to the head teacher, the coach or the committee is the whole second half.
A retirement, a conference, a work do
Before
Put the address on the agenda, not the table
Delegates photograph the screen and the slides, not a card near their glass. One line on the closing slide with the code in it outperforms anything printed for the room.
During
Ask for the material you will actually use
The awards, the room, the speaker, the queue at the coffee station. A request framed as content for the report gets contributions; a request framed as fun gets politer confusion.
Immediately after
The two-hour window
A conference is collected in the car park and the hotel bar, by people who are already leaving. The message that goes out within two hours retrieves more than the one sent on Monday.
The following week
Individual asks, in private
The colleague who films everything and the guest who took forty photographs of a slide. A personal note gets the files; a general reminder to a distribution list gets nothing.
A graduation, an engagement, a baby shower
- Graduation: the ceremony and the garden
- Two rooms with different people in them. The stand goes where the caps come off, and the morning-after ask names the family who were at the back of the field with a zoom lens and no idea where to send it.
- Engagement party: the people who will not be at the wedding
- A short guestbook message from the friend who is not invited to the wedding is worth keeping. This is the occasion where a written book does more work than a gallery, and it costs nothing to switch on.
- Baby shower: the notes as well as the room
- Advice is what a shower produces, and most of it gets written on a card that goes in a bag and is never read again. A page holds the same sentences where the family can find them, including the relatives recording from another country.
- Anniversary: the photographs from before
- An eightieth birthday or a fiftieth anniversary is the strongest occasion on this page for asking for old material. A scanned photograph from 1974 uploaded by a cousin is what makes the collection, and it is the request nobody thinks to make.
Ideas that cost one message the week before
Send the link to the travellers first
The relatives who will not be there, the friends arriving the night before, the ones who are always going to miss it. A message a week early gets their entry recorded in their own kitchen, on their own terms, before the room has even started.
Tell the three people who film everything
You know who they are. One line each, with the address and the date, and they arrive ready instead of trying to remember at midnight when the battery is at eleven percent.
Put the address in the order of service or the agenda
Anything already being written down is a surface worth using. It costs a line and it lands in front of people who have the document in their hands and two quiet minutes.
Ask the venue one question
Whether the projector or the television can run a slideshow during the two quiet windows, and who controls it. This single enquiry is what makes the screen idea on this page possible, and it is easier to ask a fortnight out than on the night.
What to write on the card, in eight words
- The occasion and the date, so the card is not a mystery object.
- One instruction: scan to add your photos and videos.
- One named request: the speeches, the dance, the send-off.
- One sentence that reads as a person asking rather than as signage.
- The closing date, if the collection will be down before the next occasion.
- Nothing about how the technology works, and no second link.
Eight to fourteen words is what a seated guest reads. Anything longer turns a request into a leaflet, and leaflets at weddings go in a pile by the door.
Two occasions people forget to plan for
The funeral wake or the memorial
The photographs that matter are in drawers, on old phones, and in the camera rolls of people who will not ask for anything on the day. A quiet message a fortnight later, from one family member to another, with the link and one specific request — the photographs of him at work, the ones from the year everybody wore that awful suit — retrieves more than any announcement at the room itself would have.
The leaving-do or the works anniversary
Thirty colleagues in a pub with one round to buy and a cake at four o'clock. Nobody sits, so a table card is useless, and the material that exists is a video message from the person who has worked next to you for eleven years. Put the link on the screen behind the bar, ask once, and send the archive to the person leaving rather than to a distribution list.
The wedding you did not photograph
An elopement, a registry-office signing, a small ceremony with no professional at all. Here the guests are the only camera, so the request has to be explicit and the plan has to leave room for clips. This is the occasion where the smallest paid collection is genuinely too small and the mid one earns its money.
The occasion that has already happened
A birthday six weeks ago, a reunion last summer. The address works away from the room and the material is still on people's phones, so a collection opened late still fills. What you cannot do is ask for a slideshow you did not run; the asking is the whole mechanism at that point.
What every occasion has in common
- A request said out loud beats a request printed, every time.
- A named moment retrieves a file; a general request for memories retrieves nothing.
- The address works away from the room, so the week after is half the collection.
- Photographs, clips and messages all arrive through one link, and a second link loses you the contributions.
- The code is printed on ordinary paper, four to a sheet, and the spare sheet goes in your pocket.
- The download is taken in the first week because the collection comes down eventually and the archive does not.
- Nobody contributing is asked for anything except their name, and only once.
Every occasion is the same mechanism with a different sentence to say.
The questions that come before the first one
Can one collection cover several events?
One collection is one occasion, and the address keeps working for as long as it is online. A weekend of celebrations belongs in one; a wedding and a christening six months later are two.
How many photographs should I plan for?
More than the head count suggests. A school sports day with sixty parents outproduces a wedding of a hundred and forty guests, because the parents each have forty frames of the same field.
Is it worth collecting for a small occasion?
Yes, and it is easier, because a room of twelve can be asked directly. The material from a small gathering is often the better half: photographs of people who did not expect to be photographed.
Who should own the collection for a family event?
One person who is actually present for the whole occasion. Two organisers is one too many when it comes to reviewing entries, and one is plenty when the address does the work.
Can strangers see what we collect?
No. Guest pages stay out of search indexes and the address is not published, so the collection travels only as far as the paper and the messages you send. Upload-only is the setting for rooms you do not know.
Do the older relatives need to do anything?
Nobody needs to do anything except hand over a photograph. Somebody else can scan the code, choose the file and put a name on it, which is how half the material at a reunion arrives.
What do we do with the set afterwards?
A frame in the hall for the reunion, a printed page for the class, the report for the conference. The archive is what makes any of those possible, so take it before the collection comes down.
One collection, whatever you are celebrating
Choose the occasion, write one specific line about what you would like to see, and put a code where the phones already are. The free plan runs a real event so you can watch how it fills.
Guides and comparisons
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.