Gallery Organization

ssimmonsphoto

Hi, All. I used to post a bit around here a couple years ago, but life has been crazy with the addition of our first kiddo. Anyways...

I've been puttering around on the new SmugMug. Love the potential! But it has really made me think about how I organize my galleries. Right now my clients find their photos by clicking on their names in a long list (seen here). On my end, I have them sorted out like this (the bolds are categories/subcategories):

Weddings>Year>Couple's Name (and sometimes I've gone so far as to make additional smart galleries like "Getting Ready", "Ceremony", "Portraits", etc.)
Portraits>Type>Couple's Name

But now I'm thinking that using the couple's names as a category wouldn't be so bad.
Couple's Name>Engagement
Couple's Name>Wedding>Getting Ready

Am I completely overthinking this? That sort of gets rid of using "events" in a way, but I'm not sure how much they are going to be really supported in the new SmugMug in the first place. :dunno

jasonscottphoto

My plan is

Weddings> Year> Couple's Name> Getting Ready
Weddings> Year> Couple's Name> Ceremony
Weddings> Year> Couple's Name> Formals
Weddings> Year> Couple's Name> Reception

Matthew Saville

jasonscottphoto wrote: »

My plan is

Weddings> Year> Couple's Name> Getting Ready
Weddings> Year> Couple's Name> Ceremony
Weddings> Year> Couple's Name> Formals
Weddings> Year> Couple's Name> Reception

I think this is the best way to do it, however I noticed that the orignal poster is linking to event pages, not categories or sub-categories.

It is unfortunate that we currently cannot just link our clients directly to a main events page, however until they improve that organization I personally prefer to just send my clients a direct link to their event page.

In the future, I would love to see SmugMug just combine the Events and Folders. They would function just the same as a Category or Subcategory. Unfortuately right now events can contain galleries from multiple parent categories, so I can see how this would become extremely complicated. But then again they were able to pull off "Smart Galleries", so I think they can figure out how to turn events into regular folders...

I would also love to have the same new back-end organization for my events as my folders and galleries. Having a massive long list of events is just terrible, considering that I work for a studio that does 150+ weddings per year.

Until then, we're stuck organizing each "gig" within a different folder structure, and then unifying them by creating a separate event page.

With that in mind, here are a few suggestions:

Weddings > Year > Month > Client's date and name > Galleries with sorted images from wedding day
Engagements > Year > Month > Galleries with client's date and name
etc. etc. etc.

OR, if you're a lower volume business, you can simplify it:

2013 Weddings > Client's date and name > Galleries with sorted images
2013 Portraits > Galleries with client's date and name
2014 Weddings >
2014 Engagements >
etc. etc. etc.

The important thing to remember is that you want your system to be as simple as your client volume can allow. If you're only shooting ~20 weddings and ~20 portrait sessions per year, you probably only need yearly categories, and you can either do it within main "Weddings" categories, or you can just break it down with one main category and combine both years and the subject into one main category.

=Matt=

jasonscottphoto

Matthew Saville wrote: »

In the future, I would love to see SmugMug just combine the Events and Folders. They would function just the same as a Category or Subcategory. Unfortuately right now events can contain galleries from multiple parent categories, so I can see how this would become extremely complicated. But then again they were able to pull off "Smart Galleries", so I think they can figure out how to turn events into regular folders...

I would also love to have the same new back-end organization for my events as my folders and galleries. Having a massive long list of events is just terrible, considering that I work for a studio that does 150+ weddings per year.


=Matt=

Agreed!!!

Even though I am going to arrange my galleries as I stated above, I still use Events to share with customers so they can mark favorites. So... I'll be adding those 4 galleries to an Event as well as a "Folder"...

joshhuntnm

jasonscottphoto wrote: »

My plan is

Weddings> Year> Couple's Name> Getting Ready
Weddings> Year> Couple's Name> Ceremony
Weddings> Year> Couple's Name> Formals
Weddings> Year> Couple's Name> Reception

I do a similar thing. IN a way , it doesn't make too much diference as I send them an email as to where to find them.

Matthew Saville

jasonscottphoto wrote: »

Agreed!!!

Even though I am going to arrange my galleries as I stated above, I still use Events to share with customers so they can mark favorites. So... I'll be adding those 4 galleries to an Event as well as a "Folder"...

Yeah and I think that to keep things simple for me in the future, I may even start bunching engagements and weddings within the same folder, somehow. I'm thinking of just putting all engagements in the wedding folder for that respective client, and eliminating my "Engagements" category altogether. Then creating a new separate one for "portraits" that only include one-off sessions such as family portraits or seniors or whatnot. I don't do many portrait sessions that aren't attached to a wedding, so this kinda makes sense!

GoofBckt

That's what I finally did as well.

Matthew Saville wrote: »

Yeah and I think that to keep things simple for me in the future, I may even start bunching engagements and weddings within the same folder, somehow. I'm thinking of just putting all engagements in the wedding folder for that respective client, and eliminating my "Engagements" category altogether. Then creating a new separate one for "portraits" that only include one-off sessions such as family portraits or seniors or whatnot. I don't do many portrait sessions that aren't attached to a wedding, so this kinda makes sense!

karloznz

Good post some helpful info here, something I have pondered myself

ssimmonsphoto

I think I was just over thinking it. I don't do a ton of weddings a year anymore, but keeping the backend organized for myself is more my concern. So I'm sticking with Weddings>Year>Couple and still using events to group shoots for the same couple/family together. Now if only I could feature events and have a photo show up instead of the blank box so I wouldn't have to do the coding myself.