saturn return to sender

I had kind of an awesome time at the wedding. Who knew Iowa could be so much fun?

I’ve spent a little time trying to decide how to organize the 900+ photos for web-based review by the newlyweds and others. I wanted to categorize the photos by event type—rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, ceremony, reception, and general portraits. I wanted to provide edited versions of those sets—my personal picks—while making sure everything was available for review somehow, in case someone likes a shot that I didn’t think was better than mediocre.

Lightroom offers some built-in gallery templates, but as far as I could tell they didn’t provide as much hierarchy as I wanted. I decided to give Flickr a shot. Currently I’ve got almost everything uploaded to my account, and have basically achieved the organization I wanted with Flickr’s collections and sets.

Two big downsides to this are:

• My photostream is now 900+ photos bigger, and only about 100 of them are shots I’d actually want to keep in there.
• I set everything to the “friends and family” privacy level, since I figured not everyone would want their likeness posted publicly online. Obviously I can’t require everyone who wants to see the photos to sign up for Flickr, but Flickr does offer a “guest pass,” where you send out a secret URL that gives the viewer access to otherwise restricted photos. However, this works for only for Sets and for an entire photostream, not for a Collection. If it worked for a Collection (which can contain Sets), I’d be set. As it is, I’m going to have to send out two URLs: one to sign in as a guest for my whole photostream, and then a second for the actual Collection. Less than ideal.

I’ve never done this kind of mass shooting for “a client” before. Suggestions are welcome.

There may be a real name for this style of image, but I’m calling it Boards-of-Canada-esque. The style involves one or more of the following:

• children
• bokeh
• sunlight
• distressed/discolored edges
• accidental framing and focus

They’re forgotten polaroids of you and your sister in the park, torn 8mm stills of your youthful mother smiling mid-blink. They’re warm and innocent and out of focus, like the memories they evoke.

Of course, in this case, they’re all digital and purposely vignetted and you took them yesterday. Kind of like using digital plugins instead of old analog synths. They’re fun to make, though!