Wedding Album Shortcut

We All Love Family Photos

Hey, I get it, we all love family photos. The little ones running around, their cousins chasing them, and granny sternly watching the scene. Then, there's that bemused young woman in the back. What's she looking at?‍

The Characters are Key to the Story!

Depending on whether you were there or how old the photos are, it can be hard to know what was going on or even name the characters. Without characters and stories, family photos are just stock photos.

If you know anything about Ponga, you probably know we're very good at putting names to faces and we do it so you can place the characters get to the stories. Ponga uses fancy tech to do this but really, it's not unlike what a really skilled person does if they have perfect recall and never forget a face.

Perfect Memory & Never Forgets a Face

Let's say this person is your long-time partner "Hal" and they're your +1 at a cousin's wedding. Everyone wants to meet them — and expects to be remembered. Since it's a family event, everyone looks alike and keep using nick names.

But, your friend Hal is special.

They remember every name and recognize a face from across the room. When you meet the same extended family at a reunion a year later, Hal knows exactly who everyone is, even makes introductions for newcomers.

The Wedding Album Shortcut

Ponga is a little like your friend "Hal." Once it's introduced to a person, it doesn't forget. When you upload your Wedding Album and start putting names to faces, you're essentially introducing Ponga to your family.

We call this the Wedding Album Shortcut. It makes sorting your photos a breeze. This might be the album or folder of images from a wedding, reunion, or really any special event. Whether it was this year or a hundred years ago doesn't matter. The principle is the same. You'll be introducing Ponga to pictures of a group of often related people where age differences are fixed in time for that one event.

Here's the basic setup:

1. Upload the photos from any big family event as your first batch of photos to effectively "teach" Ponga who is who in your family.
2. Ponga examines every picture in a batch and collects people whose faces match so that it will only ask you their name once.
3. You add names, and it sorts those pictures by person adding labels.

The cool thing happens on subsequent batches:

1. As you add more pictures of the same people, Ponga won't even bother asking you because you already "taught" it those faces.
2. Start adding pictures of the same people at slightly younger and older ages.
3. As you go further out in time it becomes more difficult for Ponga to be sure its seen these people before. Do it gradually and you'll save yourself time.

It can take 3-5 minutes, but as you add photos of people whose faces Ponga has learned, you'll notice comments added to those pictures automatically. Mouse-over the pictures in the Library, and you'll see that names have been added.

Here's why that works

By starting with that single batch or album from a single event, like a wedding, you help Ponga learn subtle details between faces. This is again, like introducing Hal to two twins at the same event. Looking at them side by side you'll know they're different people and teach Ponga that as well.

Once you've sorted the easy-to-name, you can focus on those old photos from a few generations back where you might not have any living relatives who remember them. Naming even a few people at an event can make it much easier to narrow down possibilities and make an educated guess about those who remain unnamed.

Protips:

1. Pegging the date for an event in the past: If you don't have records or invitations, having birthdates handy can be a very useful way narrow down the date for an event.
2. Babies in a picture can be a rosetta stone for pegging ages: Baby's faces can be very difficult to distinguish, but consider developmental stages combined with birth records: If a baby isn't yet walking and Ponga has matched the face of the next oldest sibling, then you might have a good guess as to who the baby is.
3. Keep copies of records handy: If you've used records such as birth or baptism documents to establish a fact like a name, date, or location, you can drag and drop an image of that document into a selection on a Ponga picture to keep them together.
4. Leave yourself notes: It's also a good practice to leave yourself notes or citations in Ponga as reference as to the source of a document or why you think this person is who you say it is.

_{Cover Image: "Rice at Celine's Wedding" Screenshot from Ponga where a small child is identified from a series of other photos previously uploaded. With a relatively small age difference and the confidence from other images, Ponga is able to match the face to someone previously named. Image credit: Photo by Victoria Priessnitz on Unsplash}

‍