Practice
Photographer and guest photos: making both fit
The professional pictures arrive in six weeks, the phone pictures in six seconds. Both belong in the same place, without one devaluing the other.
Αυτά τα άρθρα προς το παρόν υπάρχουν μόνο στα αγγλικά.
"But we have a photographer" is the most common reason not to set up a guest gallery. It is also the worst one. The two are not doing the same job.
Two jobs that do not overlap
The photographer delivers the pictures you hang on a wall: the ceremony, the portraits, the groups, the evening light. Selected, edited, in six to ten weeks.
The guests deliver the pictures the photographer was not there for: the table where somebody is mid-story, the child under the coffee table, the cigarette outside at half past midnight, the chaos in the kitchen. And they deliver them the same evening.
One does not replace the other, but it is the difference between 300 good pictures and 300 good pictures plus the rest of the day.
Getting both into the same place
Two ways, both work:
- One shared gallery. You simply add the photographer's pictures later. For guests this is the most convenient version, one link, everything in it.
- Separate galleries in the same event. One for the guest pictures, one for the professional ones, each with its own QR code and link. Useful if the professional pictures should only go to a smaller circle, or if the registry office and the big party had different guests.
Worth planning around: the upload window for guests ends after 30 or 90 days. For you as the host it does not end, precisely because the photographer's pictures almost always arrive after that. So you can wait for them and then drop them into a gallery that is already running.
Why the phone pictures do not fall apart
Eighty guests shoot with eighty different cameras, and every manufacturer's automatic has its own opinion about skin tones. Side by side that looks like a scrapbook spanning three decades.
A shared photo look puts the same colour mood over every shot. The result is not your photographer's work, but the gallery reads as a whole instead of a pile. The originals stay untouched. In the ZIP every picture sits exactly as it was taken.
What to discuss with your photographer
- Tell them beforehand. No professional has a problem with guest photos, but nobody likes a surprise. Some will even offer to put the QR code up.
- Phones during the ceremony: worth an announcement, whichever way you decide. Twenty outstretched arms in the aisle show up in every professional shot.
- Who gets what? If your photographer would like to use something from the guest pictures, hand them the ZIP with the originals, not screenshots from the gallery.
And if you are the photographer: there is a page for you.
