One private gallery, newest first, open to nobody else
The shared page is where an evening becomes a collection: every photograph that arrives, in the order it arrived, behind an address that is not in any search index. Here is what it shows, what you can do with it, and the switches that decide whether you can see it at all.
A collection without a gallery is a filing cabinet. The page where the pictures appear is the thing that makes guests keep sending: the first twenty photographs make the twentieth guest feel like the evening is being recorded, and the room starts competing with itself in the best way.
What it shows, and in what order
Newest first. The gallery is a record of the evening as it happens rather than an exhibition, so a guest who opens it at half past ten sees the speeches, and one who opens it in the taxi sees the dance floor. Each tile carries the photograph and, when the host has turned it on, the name of the person who sent it.
- Photos — stills only, which is what you want when looking for a specific moment
- Videos — the clips on their own, because a room that sends forty clips buries them among six hundred stills
- My uploads — only what you sent, which is how you check a file landed instead of wondering about it in the car home
Open a tile for the large view. The left and right arrows walk through the collection, Escape closes it, and the caption and contributor travel with the picture. "Select" gathers several files for one download where the host allows saving at all.
The three switches that decide what you can see
- The shared gallery
- On, guests browse what everyone else sent. Off, the link accepts uploads only and nobody sees anybody else's photographs — the setting for a surprise, for a collection where half the room has not been met by the other half, or for a host who simply wants the pictures at the end rather than during.
- Guest names
- Names the contributor beside their tiles in the gallery. Off means the photographs arrive anonymously to everybody but the host.
- Downloads
- Any photograph opens at full size and saves. That is the copy a guest keeps, rather than a screenshot of it — worth leaving on if relatives are far away, worth turning off if the host wants to be the one who hands the files out.
There is a fourth thing that changes what appears: whether the host looks at each submission first. When they do, a photograph sits in their pile until they say yes to it, and the gallery shows the room only what has been accepted — so an album that looks quiet may have thirty photographs waiting on a screen nobody has opened.
Nobody else can reach it
The address is long, lowercase and unguessable, the guest pages are kept out of search indexes on purpose, and there is no public listing of collections anywhere on the site. A gallery is reachable by the people the host handed the card to. That is the whole model, and it is the reason a guest who has never heard of the product will still put a photograph of their children in it.
A messaging thread
- Every file compressed twice before it lands
- Photographs that scroll out of reach inside a day
- No way to see who has sent something and who has not
- Strangers added to a thread to make the collection work
A collection
- Full-size files, with the camera's own date still attached
- Everything in one address, still there for the period printed on the dashboard
- Contributors named on their own files, so a host knows who to thank
- Only the people who were invited, and no way for anyone else to find the page
The gallery is not the archive. It is the temporary home for the files, and the download the host takes is the permanent one — which is a good thing to remember when a guest asks why the link stops working after a while.
Where the gallery sits on the night
Before
Quiet
The host's own test photographs, and whoever was in the room early. A guest arriving at an empty gallery sees the occasion and the names, which is enough to know they are on the right page.
During
It fills in bursts
A wedding fills after the speeches and again after the first dance. The bursts are when the room notices the gallery exists, and each new tile makes the next guest likelier to send one.
After
One long read
The morning after, on a bigger screen, by people who were asleep at two o'clock. This is when a gallery gets shared by word of mouth, and when the relative abroad is sent the address.
Later
It closes on a stated date
Uploads stop, the page says so, and the files themselves leave at the date the host was told about. The card still opens a truthful page; the photographs are on the host's own machine by then.
Gallery questions
Why is the gallery empty when I know people sent photographs?
Either the host turned the shared page off and is collecting uploads only, or they are reading each submission before it appears. Both look identical from a guest's side, and neither means the photographs were lost.
Can I see it on a laptop?
Yes — the same address in any browser on any machine. A link sent to yourself from the phone opens the identical page, which is the easiest way to get the collection onto a bigger screen.
Do photographs stay in the gallery forever?
No, and that is the honest design. The collection holds files for the period printed on the host's dashboard, and then they go. The permanent copy is the archive the host downloads.
Is the gallery the same as the screen in the room?
A related one. The slideshow is a second address that plays the collection full-screen, oldest first, built for a projector rather than a thumb. A host can run the screen while keeping the gallery closed to guests.
Can a guest download the whole collection?
No. The archive is a host action. A guest can save individual files when the host has left downloads on, and the host can send anyone the photographs they asked for.
The gallery is the part your guests will actually look at
One address, newest first, filters for photos, clips and their own uploads — and closed to everyone the host did not hand a card to.
How it works
From the invitation to the morning after
Nothing here needs an app, an account or a card. Guests give a name once and send their files.
Something this page does not answer? Write to support@candidphotos.myjoyfullday.com.