EventSnap – A better way to view photos

How EventSnap Changed the Big Yellow Bus

For many years, the way customers viewed their photographs in the big yellow bus stayed more or less the same.

If it wasn’t exactly broken, we tended not to poke it too hard.

For a long time we used a piece of software called PhotoParata on the custom-built viewing screens in the bus. To be fair to it, when we first started using it, it did something that very few other systems could manage. It worked in a way that suited the slightly unusual setup we use at events, and for that reason alone it became a very important part of our workflow.

The trouble was, as the years rolled on, PhotoParata was beginning to feel its age.

Actually, “beginning” is probably putting it kindly.

It was built on Microsoft Silverlight, which is one of those phrases that will either mean absolutely nothing to you, or cause you to wince slightly if you’ve ever had to deal with ageing software. Either way, it was very much yesterday’s technology. The software had become old, clunky and occasionally a little temperamental. It was never what you’d call elegant, and “stable” was sometimes more of an aspiration than a guarantee.

That said, it was still the only thing that came close to doing what we needed.

Over the years I looked at other options, but none of them really fitted the way we work. So, with a sigh and a shrug, I had more or less resigned myself to carrying on with PhotoParata.

There is, after all, a certain comfort in sticking with what you know — even if what you know is mildly annoying and held together with hope.

Then Along Came EventSnap

Earlier this year, completely out of the blue, I was contacted by the team at Capture Commerce.

They asked whether I would be willing to trial a new product they were developing called EventSnap.

My first reaction was scepticism.

Not just a little bit sceptical either — properly sceptical.

This was a brand new product, not even in beta at the time, and like most business owners I’m naturally cautious about replacing something proven with something shiny and new. Even if the “proven” system in question occasionally made me want to bang my head on the nearest desk, it was at least familiar. There’s a strange sort of comfort in that.

Still, curiosity got the better of me.

I’m always looking for ways to improve the experience for our customers, and if there was even a chance that EventSnap could make things quicker and easier, it seemed worth exploring. So I agreed to test it and give feedback.

Testing It the Sensible Way

There was no way I was going to throw a completely untested system into one of our big events and just hope for the best.

That would have been brave. Or stupid. Possibly both.

So we started small — very small — at a modest show jumping competition with only a handful of competitors. It seemed the sensible way to try it out. If it all went horribly wrong, the fallout would be limited and I could quietly pretend it had never happened.

As it turned out, the first test did throw up a few minor gremlins. That wasn’t especially surprising given how early in development the software was, and nothing was disastrous. More importantly, it was immediately obvious that the system had real promise.

In fact, by the end of that very first day, I’d already decided that I wouldn’t be going back to PhotoParata.

Which was quite a big moment, really.

150,000 Images Later…

Since that first tentative trial, we’ve now run our entire summer season of show jumping events using EventSnap.

And it has been superb.

Over the past few months we’ve put more than 150,000 images through the system and it simply hasn’t missed a beat. During the August Bank Holiday weekend alone, we processed around 23,000 images.

That’s a serious workload by any standard, and if a system has weaknesses, that sort of volume usually exposes them pretty quickly.

But EventSnap has just quietly got on with the job, which, in event photography terms, is about the highest compliment I can pay it.

Better for Us… and Much Better for Customers

From a customer point of view, the difference has been huge.

EventSnap is quicker, easier to use and far more intuitive than the old setup. Customers can browse their photographs more smoothly, the whole experience feels much more modern, and — crucially — it’s all a lot less faffy.

Yes, “faffy” is a technical term.

It’s also significantly more stable, which means less chance of awkward moments and more chance of people simply being able to find their photos without any drama. That’s exactly how it should be.

Another major advantage is flexibility.

Where PhotoParata more or less dictated what hardware could be used, EventSnap is much more adaptable. This year we’ve successfully used it across Windows, iOS and Android devices, which gives us far more options than we ever had before.

That’s particularly useful when things get busy. The permanent viewing screens in the bus still do the heavy lifting, but if we need extra browsing points, we can add more devices very easily. An iPad can become an extra viewing screen in moments, which helps keep everything moving when lots of customers want to browse at once.

In simple terms, it helps us serve people better — and that’s the whole point.

Browsing on Your Own Device

One of the clever things about EventSnap is that it can also be configured to let customers browse on their own devices, simply by connecting to the network.

That means, in the right setup, customers could use their own phone, tablet or laptop to look through their photographs without needing to queue for a dedicated viewing screen.

Now, we don’t currently use that feature ourselves. We still prefer having customers browse on the dedicated screens in the big yellow bus, because that setup works very well for the way we operate.

But it’s easy to see how useful that option could be, and it says a lot about how flexible the system is. Rather than forcing photographers into one particular way of working, EventSnap can be adapted to suit different businesses and different types of events.

And in a world where not every event photographer works out of a large yellow bus full of screens, that’s a very good thing.

A Development Team That Actually Listens

One of the most impressive things about the whole experience has been the team behind EventSnap.

The developers at Capture Commerce have been incredibly open to suggestions and feedback. Because we’ve been using the software in real-world conditions, often with large volumes of images and plenty of customers, we’ve been able to offer quite a bit of practical input.

Time and again, I’ve mentioned an idea or a feature that would make life easier, only to find that it’s been implemented almost immediately — sometimes overnight.

That kind of support is rare.

It doesn’t feel like dealing with a faceless software company. It feels like working with people who genuinely want to build something useful and who actually listen to the photographers using it.

Their support has been first class throughout, and that has made a huge difference.

Change Can Be Good. Apparently.

Most of our customers probably won’t realise just how big a change this has been behind the scenes.

And that’s fine.

From their point of view, they come into the bus, find their photos and choose what they want. If that process is quick, simple and painless, then the system is doing exactly what it should.

But from our point of view, changing the software at the heart of our customer viewing system was a significant decision.

For years we’d put up with the limitations of an ageing platform because there simply wasn’t anything better suited to the way we worked. Then, rather unexpectedly, along came something that not only matched our needs, but improved on them.

After a whole summer season, over 150,000 photographs, and one very busy August Bank Holiday weekend, it’s fair to say that EventSnap has more than proved itself.

So yes, I was sceptical at first.

Yes, I was reluctant to change.

And yes, I have been known to grumble when technology decides to be “helpful”.

But in this case, making the switch has been one of the best changes we’ve made in the big yellow bus for a long time.

And I can’t imagine going back.

More information can be found on the CaptureCommerce website.