A friendly guide
What this archive can do
A private home for photographers and their work — quick to fill, effortless to search. Here's the whole tour, in plain English.
Getting in
The front door
There are no accounts, usernames or passwords to forget — just a PIN. Type it on the unlock screen and you're in. The whole site stays private behind it, and your session is remembered so you won't have to keep re-entering it.
- One PIN, no email, no sign-up
- Everything behind it is private
- Your login is remembered on your device
Building the archive
Adding a photographer
Hit “Add photographer” and fill in as much or as little as you like — only a first name and surname are required. Dates are flexible: enter a full date, or tick “Year only” when all you know is the year (perfect for historical figures).
- First name & surname (the only must-haves)
- Country, website and Wikipedia links
- Born / died dates — full date or year-only
- Website links fix themselves — no need to type “https://”
Describing them
Genres & tags, made easy
Give each photographer one or more genres (portrait, documentary, street…) and any tags you like. Both are intelligent: as you start typing, the archive suggests names you've already used, so your vocabulary stays consistent instead of drifting into “landscape”, “landscapes” and “Landscape”.
- Add multiple genres per photographer
- Free-form tags for anything else
- Autocomplete suggests existing names as you type
The photographs
Adding photos, the painless way
Drop in photos however suits you — drag a single shot, a whole folder, or paste a link to an image online. They start uploading the moment you add them, so by the time you hit Save there's nothing to wait for. Big camera files are automatically resized to a web-friendly size on the way in.
- Drag & drop files or an entire folder
- Choose files, or paste an image URL
- Uploads begin immediately — Save is instant
- Large photos are auto-resized so nothing bounces
Clever bit
Automatic tagging
Every photo you add is quietly read by AI and tagged with what's actually in it — “dog”, “beach”, “fog”, “architecture” — so you can find pictures by their contents later, without lifting a finger. It happens in the background after upload.
- AI describes each photo's subjects automatically
- Makes photos searchable by what's in them
- Runs in the background — no waiting
Tidying up
Editing a photo's tags
Don't agree with the AI? Click any photo to open it full-screen, and edit its tags right there — add your own, or remove any you don't want (including the automatic ones). Want to label lots of photos at once? Use “Select” on a photographer's page to pick several and tag them all in one go.
- Open a photo and add or remove its tags
- Remove auto tags you disagree with
- “Select” mode → tag many photos at once
Finding things
Search that keeps up
The search bar on the home page filters as you type. Search by a photographer's name, their country, a genre or tag, or even something an AI spotted inside a photo — results narrow instantly with every keystroke.
- Filters live as you type
- Matches names, countries, genres and tags
- Even finds photos by their AI-detected contents
Viewing the work
The full-screen viewer
Click any photograph to see it big. Page through a photographer's whole collection with the on-screen arrows or your keyboard's left/right keys, and press Esc (or click outside) to close. Each photo shows its tags beneath.
- Click a photo to enlarge it
- Arrow buttons or ← → keys to move through
- Esc, the close button, or a click outside to exit
Housekeeping
Editing & removing
Nothing is set in stone. Open a photographer and hit “Edit” to change any of their details or add more photos. Remove a single photo by hovering it and clicking Delete, or delete a whole photographer (and all their photos) from their Edit page. Deletions always ask first.
- Edit any photographer's details any time
- Delete a single photo, or a whole photographer
- Everything confirms before it removes anything
Built by humans. Typed by Claude.