Share only your favorite photos with your busy/attention-span-defficient friends and family

When we shoot wedding photos, we generally deliver at least 400 images. That’s a lot to go through. Some people can pour through them for hours, enjoying them all.

Others (me included) can have somewhat lesser of an attention span. Over in our sharing gallery, you can select your favorites by hovering your mouse over the image on the photo page. Then select ADD TO FAVORITES. Once you’ve selected at least one, there is a “MY FAVORITES (#)” link in the top left corner. Click that link to see, rearrange, and organize your the pictures you’ve selected as favorites. You could even order prints or downloads through this screen.

You can share them with us (the wedding photographers – we love to see your favorites, and can use this information when building your book), or friends with the “Share” button in the top right of the favorite screen. Grab the link and share it with others on Facebook, email, or whatever.

These Favorites are saved for 30 days. If you want a more permanent solution, check out the post on Collections.

An easy way to save and organize your favorite photos in one place

We deliver a lot of images. Weddings are a full day, and we shoot a lot to make sure we capture everything. Sure, the pictures get narrowed down a lot. But in a typical wedding, we deliver anywhere from 400 to 700 photos. Ish.  Our selection process is pretty stringent, and we only deliver the best photos that tell the story of the day.

Most brides and mothers of the bride have liked us delivering that many. But some people, it’s a bit much to look through them all. Enter collections. I’d posted about using collections to organize your favorite photos a while ago.

Here are the basic steps:

1. Sign up for a free Visitor account. It’s the last option.
2. On the Organizer bar on the left side of your Zenfolio edit page, select New, then Collection.
3. Name your Collection.
4. Go to the gallery on our Sharing Gallery.
5. On the photo you wish to add as a favorite, roll your mouse over the photo, and select Add to Collection on the left side of the photo. Go through and do this will all your favorites.

That’s it! Then you have a collection of your favorite photos.

My friend set up one here for her wedding.

Here’s a help page if you run into issues. Or email to helpme [at] themosaicphoto {dot} com.

Make sure the prints you order are perfect.

For any portrait session, we upload the photos to our sharing gallery. Now, we’ll review each order before sending them to our lab. This way, you’ll be sure to be happy when your prints arrive at your door.

Once you place your order, we’ll be notified. From there, we will check things like cropping, color, and paper types to ensure that you get the highest quality and satisfaction out of your prints.  A while back, we had a client’s relative order some prints through our sharing gallery. One of the images they ordered was an amazingly cute picture of a toddler. Unfortunately, the auto-crop feature cut off the little guy’s feet. Needless to say, that wasn’t up to our standards. We corrected the issue and made the cropping easier/more apparent, but knew we needed to have a permanent solution.

So now we can review, replace, and correct the images on orders.  As photographers, we want our clients to receive the best possible prints when you order them through us. The photos you get are the physical presentation of your wedding, family, or stage of life. They are also a reflection of our work. But most importantly, we want you to be happy with your photos, and we think that this process provides the best solution.

If you’re worried this will delay you getting your prints, we can turn it off. But do know that we check our email and ordering statuses often. A lot. Almost to the point of obsessive compulsive behavior. Don’t worry, we can stop at any time. We just don’t want to. We’re in control.

“Your prints are cheap. Are they as high of quality as other photographer studio prints?”

That is the most frequent question I get about any service Mosaic Photo offers. This is an understandable question. Our prints are much cheaper than one would expect to pay, especially from a professional photographer. In case you were wondering, our prints start at $.60 for a 4×6 and $5.50 for an 8×10.

Our print prices are decidedly low. One of the reasons we started Mosaic Photo was a response to hearing the frustration from friends about the availability and price of prints.  After paying the sitting fee, actually getting prints can be a lot extra.

So, it is a fair rationalization. “If their prints are so much more, the quality must be better.” Makes sense. And that’s what most studios these days want you to think, but that’s not the case at all.  Our lab uses a chemical process to produce the highest quality on the best paper.

Allow me to get a little geeky. There are two main ways of photographic printing: ink-jet and chemical. Ink-jet prints are similar to your home printer, and produce the image by laying down very small dots of color. Sometimes, the dots are visible, leading to poor image quality. Another problem is banding, which are large streaks across an ink-jet print. Humidity and other environmental conditions can degrade the quality over time with an ink-jet print. We don’t use ink-jet printers. Our labs use chemical processing. Chemical printing is similar to traditional prints from film negatives. The result is a rich, clear, and smooth image.

All of that means that we use the highest quality process, on some great Kodak paper – either a traditional luster finish or some amazingly glossy metallic paper. (Yeah, I get excited about paper…) In essence, you get the same or better quality through us as the expensive prints. 

A lot of pros make their profit on prints. We don’t. Instead, our sharing gallery is a service to our clients to make it easy to get high quality prints. 

One of our core values at Mosaic Photo is to provide full service delivery of a great product. And to do that, we believe that you should be able to afford as many prints as you’d like – so we keep the cost of getting photos as low as possible. It’s a new way of doing business. We like it. We hope you do too.

Check out our sharing gallery in action for senior portraits, weddings, or VeggieTales.

Collections are virtual galleries and they hold links to photos.  They are an easy way to keep and share your favorite images from your event/shoot.

To start sharing and organizing your favorite photos, go to the sign up page.  Here, you’ll get your own homepage and be able to save links to your favorite photographs to a collection.

Just hover your mouse over a favorite image. The bottom icon adds to a new or existing collection.  Then, easily share your images. Collections are a great way to sort through our images. Keep the best-loved photographs in one easy, elegant location.

In order to provide the best possible service to our clients, we’ve set up a sharing gallery.  Simple, easy, and elegant.

As soon as we process your images, we upload the print-ready files to a personal online gallery.  Here, you can quickly navigate through your images and find your favorites.  Dynamic pages allow for super fast image loading and intuitive keyboard navigation. It’s simple and elegant.

Ordering is easy too, with a clean interface with our professional photo lab.  Instead of taking your images to a local lab, order prints at your leisure through the online gallery. The prints are delivered right to your door…or to Grandma’s house.  Our print prices range from $.60 for a 4×6 to $5.50 for an 8×10 – cheap economical for professional prints from a full-service photography group.  Save time and the hassle of traditional photo labs without sacrificing quality.

Images are fun to share.  There are some convenient elements of our galleries that make sharing easy. First, every gallery comes with a very cool full screen slide show. Customizable and intuitive features make this an engaging way to share your photos with anyone.  Links are easily shareable for the whole gallery, the slideshow, or a particular image.

Viewing, printing, and sharing made simple.