How to collect photos after a party

The reliable way to collect photos from a party is to set up a single place for them before the party starts, and to make joining it a scan rather than a task. Asking afterwards works for the two people who always send things and nobody else, because by then the photos are buried and the moment has gone.

Why does asking afterwards not work?

Three reasons, and none of them are that your friends do not care. The photos are three hundred pictures deep in a camera roll. Sending them means choosing which ones, which is work. And the request arrives on a Monday, when the party feels like it happened to somebody else.

Anything you set up during the party avoids all three, because the photo is sent at the moment it is taken and the choosing happens then too.

What to set up before the night

• —One destination, not three. A group chat and an album and a hashtag means the photos end up split across all of them.
• —Joining should be a scan or a tap, with no account and nothing to install.
• —Decide when people see the results. Later is better: it keeps the party in the room instead of on a screen.
• —Print the code in more than one place, and put one where people queue.
• —Ask one person to mention it out loud, once, early in the evening.

Group chat, shared album or a shared roll?

A group chat gets the most participation and the worst files: everything is compressed and mixed in with the conversation, and it is unusable a year later. A shared album keeps the quality but usually asks for an account, which loses you a slice of the room. A shared roll with a limit gets both, at the cost of the thousand throwaway shots you were never going to look at.

We got the night through everyone else's eyes, not just ours, and it arrived as one thing instead of a hundred notifications.

The party already happened. What now?

Move fast and make it as easy as possible. Send one message within forty-eight hours, while people still remember the night, with a single link that opens straight into an upload page. Ask for a specific small number rather than everything: "send your best three" gets answered, "send me your photos" does not.

Then send one reminder, once, with two or three of the best photos you already have attached. Seeing the photos is what makes people go and look for theirs.

How long should you keep them?

Download the originals as soon as the collection is complete and put them somewhere you control. Whatever service you use, know what its retention period is before you rely on it, and tell your guests too. People share more freely when they know what happens to it.

Set up one shared roll for your next party and collect everything on the night itself. Price your event