a Snowy Mountains weekend
If you have forgotten
Three things to do, and what comes back when you do them.
Kept short on purpose
Everything you have to do lives on one page: Share your photos. No app, no account, no password. This page explains what each part of it is for, and roughly what happens next.
Open this site in Safari, tap the share arrow — the square with an arrow coming out of the top — and choose Add to Home Screen. It then sits with your apps and opens in one tap, which is the difference between using it daily and meaning to.
While you are at it: install the free Google Drive app and sign in with any Google account. You will never see it again, but with it installed your photographs queue and send themselves when the signal comes back. Without it, an upload on thin mountain reception simply fails.
Open Share your photos and press the one button. Pick as many as you like straight from your camera roll. Videos are welcome. Each file ticks over to ✓ in the log once it is safely with the studio — that tick is your receipt, and you can close the page as soon as you have it.
The tick does not mean it is on the pages yet. See Two speeds, on purpose below.
If one frame stopped the room, send it again under Got one that stopped everybody? and it gets the big treatment — full width, top of the day’s page, first in line for the book.
When it lands you are asked why this one? Answer in a sentence. That sentence is usually what ends up printed underneath the photograph, in your words rather than ours — and it is the one thing none of us can supply for you.
The moment your photographs land, a box opens underneath them. Whatever you type there is filed against those exact frames, so your words end up beside the right picture instead of somewhere near it. One line is plenty.
Above the button there is a question, and it changes each day. It is the same question for everybody, so it works at the table: somebody reads it out, everybody argues about it, and whoever had the best answer says it into the phone.
If typing is a chore, press Say it instead and talk. Thirty seconds is plenty. Ramble — rambling is better than tidy, and the tidying is our job.
One for each day, in order, so nobody has to look at a phone to start the conversation.
If a place is worth passing on — a restaurant, a stay, a person you met — put the name in the Black Book box. Just the name. No review, no stars, no marks out of ten.
We will ask you about it properly afterwards, when you can remember what the room smelled like. That conversation is what makes the entry; a rating never does.
Tonight’s reel plays the day’s photographs within minutes of them landing. Cast it to the biggest screen in the lodge before dinner. Videos do not appear in the reel — they join the pages the following day.
The day’s page — pictures, captions and your words put together — is live by lunchtime the following day. Never instantly, because a person makes it. Somebody reads every frame and every note and decides where it goes. That delay is the craft, not a fault. If something you sent is not on a page yet, look in the reel: it is almost certainly there.
The book comes after you are home, once everyone has had a chance to say which photographs they cannot live without.
I sent one by mistake. A photograph of you that you would rather was not here? Open the gallery, tap it, and it comes out — off the pages, out of the slideshow, out of the book. Nobody is told, and nothing is ever really deleted, so it can always come back. Open the gallery to take one out.
There is no signal. Add the photographs anyway if you have the Google Drive app. They queue quietly on your phone and send themselves the moment you are back in range.
Who can see this? Only people with the link. There is no account to make and the site carries instructions telling search engines to ignore it, so it will never appear in anyone’s results. Everything on these pages arrived from somebody’s phone. Treat the link the way you would treat a house key.
Anything at all not working — hello@maisongourraud.com. A broken upload is our problem, not yours.