Thursday, June 28, 2007

Photo sharing in the digital age

Before the digital camera became standard for casual point-and-shooters, disposable cameras were frequently found on tables at weddings, and guests were asked to share their perspectives of the wedding by taking pictures and leaving the cameras behind. I've heard mixed reviews about this tactic, but the overwhelming majority of people who were sucked in to the cardboard camera idea say that they end up with a large photo-development bill and lots of blurry pictures.

I suspect the photos from our guests will be fantastic--several family members and friends are very talented photogs--but our guests will be using their own cameras. We needed a way to share their photos.

Downloading pics to a computer at the reception seemed...impractical (not to mention annoying and kind of weird). We came up with a better idea.

At the reception, we'll be distributing self-addressed, postage-paid envelopes containing blank CDs to anyone who wants them, and we'll ask our guests to copy their pictures from the wedding to the CDs and then drop them in the mail to us. I hope that our guests will be willing to share their photos and willing to take the extra steps required to copy them to a CD and then mail them. If they are, I think we'll get some great pictures that we might not otherwise have.

I was unsure of how many envelopes to create--we don't want to have 20 extra self-addressed, stamped envelopes, but we don't want to run out. Since the CD spindle contained 25 CDs and the CD cases came in packages of 25 and the envelopes came in packages of 12, I decided that 24 was a good number.

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