Client Gallery
Definition
A client gallery is a delivery mechanism rather than a shop window. A photographer finishes a wedding, a product shoot or a set of headshots and has to put several hundred images in front of exactly one person, let them look, let them choose, and let them download what they paid for. The volumes are the problem: 400 frames at 8 MB each is over 3 GB before anything is resized. Access is usually a password-protected link rather than accounts, because a client should not have to register to see their own photographs. Many galleries also carry an expiry date, partly to keep storage under control and partly because delivery was a job with an end.
Why It Matters
Two things go wrong here and both cost money. Serve full-resolution files for browsing and the client's phone gives up somewhere inside 3 GB; serve only small ones and they cannot get the images they bought. Leave the gallery public but unlisted and it gets forwarded, which is how paid work ends up somewhere you never agreed to. An expiring link with a stated date fixes the second problem and the storage bill together, and it makes the terms concrete: proofs are up for thirty days, finals are yours to keep.
How It Works
Deliver in two tiers. The browsing set is capped at around 2000 pixels wide, watermarked if that is your practice, a few hundred kilobytes each, so 400 proofs come to a few hundred megabytes rather than gigabytes. Finals go out as a single ZIP archive at full resolution, downloaded once, instead of 400 separate links to click through. Put the whole thing behind a password and send that password separately from the link — in the invoice email, not in the same message — and set the expiry to match what your contract says. Keep your own copy of everything you delivered somewhere else, because a gallery that expires or gets cleared is not a backup. If you need to know whether the client has looked yet, the view count on the page answers it without your having to ask.
Real-World Example
A wedding photographer puts 380 proofs at ashby-proofs.99helpers.site behind a password, each capped at 2000 pixels: 240 MB in total, against the 3.1 GB the exports occupy on her drive. The couple takes a fortnight to pick 60 favourites. Those go up as one 1.4 GB ZIP file with a fresh password, and the proof gallery expires a month later. The stats show the proofs were opened eleven times, almost all on phones, which is why the next gallery is laid out for a phone first.
Common Mistakes
- ✕Sending the password in the same email as the link — the protection then stops only somebody who does not have the email, which is nobody
- ✕Publishing full-resolution files as the browsing set — the client cannot load them and you pay the bandwidth for every failed attempt
- ✕Treating the gallery as your archive — when it expires or you clear out storage, the delivered set goes with it
Related Terms
Photo Gallery
A photo gallery is a page that presents a set of images for looking at — a trip, a portfolio, an event — usually as a grid of thumbnails that open larger versions. It is public: anyone with the link, and often a search engine, can see it.
Password-Protected Link
A hosted address that asks for a shared secret before it will show the file or site behind it. One password covers everyone who has the link; there are no individual accounts.
Expiring Link
A shareable address that stops serving its file after a set moment — a date, a number of days, or a number of downloads. The file stays stored; only the route to it closes.
ZIP Archive
A single .zip file that holds many files and folders, each compressed separately. On a host it is used two ways: served as one download, or unpacked on upload so its contents are served individually.
Client Deliverable
The finished thing you hand over at the end of a piece of work — a report, a set of files, a built site, a brand pack. Handing it over well means a stable address, a clear name and a version anyone can identify.
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