Answers for photographers
How client galleries, camera-to-cloud upload and sorting photos by person actually work. Written to be useful whether or not you use SnapFlow.
Delivering photos
- How do I share a photo gallery with a client? Upload the photos to an online gallery and send the client a single link. The client opens it in a browser with no app and no account, views the full set, and downloads what they need. Good gallery software also lets you password-protect the link, set an expiry date, and control whether downloads are web-resolution or full size.
- How do I password-protect a client photo gallery? Set a password on the gallery itself, then send the link and the password separately. Anyone with the link is asked for the password before any photo loads. Use it for private commissions, embargoed work, and anything involving children. It is per gallery, so one client's password never opens another client's photos.
- How do I let clients download high-resolution photos? Enable full-resolution downloads on the gallery. Clients can then download single images or the whole set as a ZIP at original size. Most gallery software also offers a web-resolution option, which is the safer default for social sharing because it keeps print-quality files behind a deliberate decision rather than a stray click.
- How do I set a photo gallery to expire? Give the gallery an expiry date when you create it. After that date the link stops resolving and the photos are no longer reachable, without you having to remember to close it. Expiry is how archive storage stays bounded, and it is also what makes a paid re-activation possible later.
- How do clients pick their favourite photos from a gallery? Turn on proofing. The client opens the gallery, taps a heart on the frames they want, and their selection comes back to you as a list instead of an email describing photos by filename. It is how album design, retouch orders and print selections get agreed without a spreadsheet.
- How do I share event photos with a QR code? Generate a QR code for the gallery and print it once. Guests scan it with a phone camera and the gallery opens in their browser, with no app and no signup. Because the code points at the album rather than at a file, it keeps working as the gallery fills, so the same sign is valid all day.
The match-day workflow
- How do I upload photos from my camera to the cloud automatically? Use your camera's built-in FTP transfer over Wi-Fi or a tethered phone. The camera sends each frame to a server as you shoot, so the photos arrive without a card reader, a laptop, or an import step. Most professional bodies from Canon, Nikon, Sony and Fujifilm support FTP or FTPS natively.
- Which cameras support FTP upload to a gallery? Most professional and enthusiast bodies released in the last decade support FTP or FTPS, either natively or through a wireless transmitter accessory. That covers current Canon EOS R, Nikon Z, Sony Alpha and Fujifilm X and GFX bodies. Check your manual for 'FTP transfer' or 'network settings' before buying anything extra.
- What does a same-day sports photography workflow look like? Upload during the match rather than after it, cull to the keepers, let the album sort itself by athlete, and send one gallery link per player or per team. The work that used to happen at home in the evening happens while you are still at the ground, so the gallery is live before the crowd has left.
- How much storage does a high-volume sports photographer need? Budget roughly 2-5 GB per fixture for delivered JPEGs, and ten times that if you keep RAWs online. A photographer shooting two fixtures a week needs somewhere between 200 GB and 1 TB a season. Expiring old galleries, rather than buying more storage, is what keeps that number flat year on year.
Sorting by person
- How do I sort event photos by face automatically? Face recognition groups an album by person. The software detects every face, clusters the ones belonging to the same individual, and produces a set of photos per person, so a 900-frame event becomes one gallery per guest or athlete. You confirm who is who once, and later events match against the same registry.
- How does photo recognition work when a face is not visible? Recognition falls back to other identifiers when no face is visible. In team sport it reads the shirt number instead; in motorsport the car number and livery stand in for a face entirely. Appearance matching groups frames of the same person by kit and build when neither a face nor a number is legible.
- How do I sort motorsport photos by car number? Recognition reads the competition number and livery on the car rather than looking for a face, which is not visible behind a helmet. The album comes out grouped by car, so a race meeting sorts into a gallery per driver or per team without anyone tagging frames by hand.
- How do I give each athlete their own gallery? Sort the album by person, then share each person's set as its own link. The family opens a gallery containing only their athlete instead of searching a squad folder. For a club, that means one link per player handed over in a single message rather than a shared drive nobody opens.
- Is face recognition legal for event photography under GDPR? Facial recognition creates biometric data, which Article 9 of the GDPR treats as a special category and prohibits processing by default. For event photography the workable basis is usually explicit consent under Article 9(2)(a). Ordinary photographs are not biometric data; it is the recognition step that changes the legal position.