In his interview with NY Times Magazine, Noah Baumbach discusses how he had an impromptu wedding where most of his photos were taken on a crappy polaroid. That sounds mildly appealing, but it gave me a better idea.
Instead of spending a few thousand dollars on a wedding photographer, I'll just let my friends take the photos for me. Assuming it'll be at least a few years before I get married, I'm guessing most camera phones and all digital cameras will have at least 3 megapixels and either bluetooth or wi-fi. On the invite, I'll mention that I've set up a flickr group for my wedding and anyone who has an account should join the group. Then, at the wedding I'll have a few wifi hotspots set up. While people take their photos, they'll be sent to a central computer via wi-fi that will add the right tags, upload the photos and add them to the flickr group via some software utilizing the flickr API.* As an added bonus, I can set up a projector to display photos on a screen as they're being taken.
You could do a lot of this stuff now, and I'm sure people have had live webcams and the like at weddings, but I feel like the wi-fi component will push it over the edge. If I had to have friends submit photos when they got home, it would still be cool to see but there'd be plenty who wouldn't upload for weeks. I want the immediate gratification. And, of course, you'd need friends who take lots of pictures to make this work.
Has anyone tried something close to this?
* I'm not sure if this is possible today, but I figure it'll work in a few years if it doesn't.
10/09/05 11:40 PM
excellent! group event moblogging with tags AND physical interactivity. hooray for instant gratification.
i'm certain people do some form of this today, but nearly all of it manually, by creating private groups and asking people to send their photos to the group after the fact...but of course it's not instantaneous, it's a pain unless everybody is already flickr-fied, and uploading photos is still a PITA. i hate going to events and seeing everybody with a digital camera out, but never being able to find the photos online later on. flickr and tagging has helped in that aspect, though.
the wi-fi built into the digital cameras is the thing that's going to make it all work together though. i mean, even if you have a cameraphone, lots of people don't transfer the photos elsewhere. and MMSing is still a bit clunky and too expensive to really catch on. i'm guessing an absurd number of people's photos live on their cameraphones for ages and ages.
and of course, you're got the moblogging contingent already doing this event-based aggregation to some extent...maybe if you all moblogged of the festivities under a certain, pre-agreed upon tag, but the tying it all together for a physical display would still be clunky. i guess have the computer doing the projection periodically poll the RSS feed for that tag? (and people who couldn't make it could follow via RSS!) that doesn't solve the group pool problem though.
...and, of course, all of this requires way too much setup in the first place.
I want the immediate gratification. And, of course, you'd need friends who take lots of pictures to make this work.
lots of photos, and lots of good photos! remember all those people who tried to get their friends to photograph their wedding receptions by putting disposable cameras on the tables? all they ended up with were friends who felt awkward, and a lot of really bad prints.
10/10/05 1:04 AM
Ah yes, the disposable cameras! And you're right, the photos are almost always awful. I guess my hope is that between my love of photography and my girlfriend being a photographer, I'd have enough friends who would know what they're doing (note: there are zero plans for engagement or marriage, for the record).
My hope is that by having them use their own camera, they'll be more likely to take photos that have some meaning instead of just snapping away because they feel obligated. Maybe I'll just get married a few times to do some research.
10/10/05 11:06 AM
You're a weird, weird dude.
10/26/05 7:28 AM
Excellent idea! But your friends gotta have very good taste to make it perfect.
When a person knows nothing about photography, he might take a bad picture of the best view.