Organizing Wedding Galleries - With Examples

jhelms

After visiting a few dozen websites where photographers have posted wedding / event galleries for proof and ordering - I noticed that far too many of them just have all of the pictures dumped into one central gallery. Hundreds of pictures all in one place - most of them are organized from oldest to newest but still a pain (IMHO) to sift through.

I recently took part in photographing 3 weddings and tried to organize my pictures so that each gallery has at least 30-50 pictures in it, but hopefully no more than 150 pictures with around 100 being a target.

Here's how I divided them - I'm open to any opinions, comments and suggestions since it will be a lot easier to make sure I'm organizing these correctly now rather than to second guess myself a year or so from now:

www.johntookmypicture.com - main website
www.johntookmypicture.com/weddings - linked directly from the main website

From there I have subcategories for each wedding:

http://jhelms.smugmug.com/Weddings/599492
http://jhelms.smugmug.com/Weddings/599456
http://jhelms.smugmug.com/Weddings/605460 (still uploading some of these)

The galleries seem to be breaking down into the following predictable groups:

1) Bridal luncheon
2) Bridal nail / spa (sometimes combine galleries 1 & 2)
3) Rehearsal
4) Rehearsal dinner (depending on the number of pics sometimes combine # 3 & 4)
5) Bridal group hair and makeup session
6) Casual pre-wedding pics; hanging out at Church, caterers getting ready, etc.
7) Posed formal group pics
8) Posed formal B&G pics; any picture that is posed and has either the B/G alone or with each other but not with additional people
9) Ceremony
10) Reception
11) Departure and garter / bouquet toss, etc.
12) Post-reception cleanup (sometimes combine with 10 or 11)

I'll also put additional galleries if I have them of wedding showers, engagement pictures, etc. I also sort the galleries from newest up top to oldest at the bottom.

So how does this look on the goldilocks scale? Too many galleries / not enough / just right?

Scott_Quier

It rates somewhere on between "just right" and "maybe too many".

As for the structure ... what I've come up with is

Category: Weddings
Sub-Category: One sub-category for each event (i.e., Smith/Joes 13 Sep 2008)
Galleries:
- Rehearsal and/or rehearsal dinner
- Getting Ready (hair, nails, makeup, getting dressed, getting the gown on, etc)
- Ceremony
- Formal/Family Portraits
- Reception
- Specials (garter, bouquet, cake cutting, first dances, toasts, departure from reception)
- Details (cake, bouquet, rings, program, etc)

cj99si

I personally like it all together(300 shots or less)... I believe It portrays a better smoother story. Many of my clients have actually commented on just that.

So initially I think all together works great. It may be an improvement to separate them like you guys are saying after everyone has looked at them, and are going back for the 3rd or 4th time just to find specific shots.

Just my thoughts. By the way J love that shot of the bride, what a great expression!

jhelms

Good points from both of ya'll - thanks for the input.

You're right Scott, I think if I end up using all 12+ of my categories it would be too much. But usually / hopefully I can combine a few of them depending on how many pics I have that are 'keepers' in each section.

And I like what you suggested by splitting out the 'specials' and 'details', since I think mine were possibly getting lost in the reception pics. I might do that differently next time.

Scott I also noticed that you use the Kingston flush mount books - http://lovenlaughter.smugmug.com/gallery/2648135 - what is the rough price range on one of those (around 20 pages / 40 sides) with a more basic cover style?

CJ, I can definitely see a slight benefit of continuity by having all the pics together but for me I personally get tired of looking through 150-200 pics in the same gallery but for some reason can usually go through 500 or so without getting bored if they are broken up a little bit.

Thanks for the compliments on that pic of the bride, I thought that expression was awesome too. The groom had his eyes closed, so I had to crop him out of the picture. I've gone back and forth on whether or not the grooms' chopped off arm detracts from the picture too much - what do you think?

I do like the idea of keeping them together for their book though, I'm doing a 120+/- blurb book right now for this last wedding and will just have each gallery represented as a separate chapter (with the formals of course getting a large section with almost all of those being large pictures instead of collages, etc.).

Scott_Quier

jhelms wrote:

Scott I also noticed that you use the Kingston flush mount books - http://lovenlaughter.smugmug.com/gallery/2648135 - what is the rough price range on one of those (around 20 pages / 40 sides) with a more basic cover style?

This is a open forum. Quoting wholesale prices is contrary to good business practices. If you really want to know, may I suggest you register with them - it's free and easy if you can substantiate a claim of being a professional photographer (usually only requires a suitable formatted web site:D). It's well worth your time. I also can recommend GraphiStudio as an album source.

bham

Another idea could be to put together a favorites or artists pics for one gallery and then the others seperate into rehearsal/rehearsal dinner, preceremony, ceremony, post ceremony. That gives you 4 galleries which isn't a ton, and allows you to put together a great slideshow for the favorites. You will have duplicates since your favorites will also be located in their proper area as well.

To me 12 galleries is just overkill. 6 is the largest I would go.

jhelms

Scott_Quier wrote:

This is a open forum. Quoting wholesale prices is contrary to good business practices. If you really want to know, may I suggest you register with them - it's free and easy if you can substantiate a claim of being a professional photographer (usually only requires a suitable formatted web site:D). It's well worth your time. I also can recommend GraphiStudio as an album source.

Cool, I'll be registering with a couple of them this week, my smugmug site is pretty 'stock' on the formatting - www.johntookmypicture.com - hopefully that will work (have the separate section for weddings, etc.).

bham wrote:

To me 12 galleries is just overkill. 6 is the largest I would go.

I agree, and I should have clarified that if it does look like I would have that many I would definitely combine some of the smaller galleries together to hopefully end up with 8 if possible, but no more than 10. That list of 12 would just be the sections that I'd pick from but usually I'll combine some of them.

cj99si

do you have any similar pics of the groom, shouldnt be to hard to open his eyes. That shot looks like its worth some extra effort

jhelms

cj99si wrote:

do you have any similar pics of the groom, shouldnt be to hard to open his eyes. That shot looks like its worth some extra effort

The one right before is this one:



I do have some others of him though but no PS skills, might can get someone to do it though...

cj99si

send me a couple, I should be able to take care of it for you.