From candles to cameras: how to make your birthday and other memories last a lifetime

Whether you’re marking a big birthday or anniversary or anything else, celebrations of life’s milestones can acknowledge the passing of another year, express gratitude and strengthen the bonds with friends and family through a shared experience. A moment like this also offers the chance for personal reflection, while recognising the achievements of the past year.

Photos are like emotional anchors, providing visual clues to particular events and acting as catalysts for remembering specific people and moments. They document our personal histories by capturing details which could otherwise fade from memory.

With the right pictures, you can relive all the laughter and surprise moments, the décor and location, while thinking about those who were there. What’s more, if they’re old enough, pictures can remind you of things, fashions, pets or people that are no longer around.

Each guest at a celebration will have their unique perspective on the event. And what they capture on camera or smartphone often provides the best record of the day. Candid, unguarded shots are almost always more powerful than rigidly posed ones. So there’s a joy in seeing unexpected moments captured, some of which, as host, you may not even have noticed at the time.

There are many reasons why you can’t always rely on guests to send in their photos after an event, most of them entirely understandable. We’re all only human, so of course it’s natural that people frequently forget, while some shots may inadvertently get deleted.

Sure, you can share photographs on group chats via the likes of WhatsApp. But these can get very messy, so it’s easy to lose photos, while some images will never get shared beyond the chat, or they disappear into the black hole of a long thread.

Equally, while you may have thought that social media platforms offered the perfect place to have a pictorial record of key life moments, not everyone uses the same platform, and some do not use any. So you could miss out on memories if you depend solely on Instagram, Snapchat or similar.

A live shared gallery is the best way to capture and view event photos, since it allows guests to contribute in real time to a single, consolidated and coordinated album. You can gather a collection of precious memories with no need to download an app or go through complex steps before doing so.

Guests simply scan strategically located QR codes to upload their own photos, which you can see during a live slideshow or ‘photo wall’ as the event is taking place. Not only does this boost engagement with the occasion, but it means you won’t miss a second of your party. You get a comprehensive, diverse perspective on the occasion, including authentic, candid contributions from those in attendance which even a professional photographer could have missed.

Whatever the occasion, whether it’s a landmark birthday celebration or anything else, EventsAlbum is an online album for sharing all the pictures from the occasion. Guests just scan the QR code in seconds before uploading their photos, which you can display via a live rolling gallery straight away, so guests can see them at the same time.

Here are some other benefits to using our service:

• - You can approve all the images before they’re displayed.
• - We don’t change the quality at all – so you get the full high resolution which most smartphones deliver these days.
• - There are no limits on storage – have as many photos as you want.
• - Keep images for up to a year and download them whenever you like. You can easily access them all in one go.

Learn more about our prices here or contact us with any queries. Better still, see how the process works with a free demo event.