Every photo, filed
Every photo they share, filed and kept. The ones you choose, printed.
Paste their Google Photos album link once. New photos arrive on their own, dated and filed to the area they served in, one copy of each. The ones you choose print.
Photos
Today their pictures sit in a shared album, an inbox, and a chat thread — undated, unlabeled, the same shot more than once — and the mission account much of it lives on closes within months of release. What goes with it is the order of things: which week, which town, which chapter of the story.
- A connected album is checked every hour, and only genuinely new pictures are announced.
- Photos file by the camera's own date and the area served that day; a recorded transfer re-files them, and anything you filed by hand stays put.
- The same picture arriving from the album, a letter, or an upload is kept once.
- Photos live in a private bucket; every view is a signed link that expires.
- A video chosen for the book cannot be deleted, and the code printed for it is never sealed.
How it works
Paste the album link once
When your missionary shares a Google Photos album (or a Drive folder), paste its link on the Photos page. We read only what the link already shows. The first import starts immediately; after that, the archive checks every hour.
Each photo files itself
The original file arrives, camera date intact. Each photo lands on the day it was taken, in the area your missionary served that day, and re-files itself when a transfer is recorded. A shot that arrives twice is kept once.
Choose what prints
As photos arrive the AI suggests the book-worthy ones; you keep, remove, caption, and pick each area's lead picture. Videos have their own page. Choose one for the book and it prints as a code: scan, and it plays.
On the printed page
What ends up in the book
- A full-bleed photograph opening each area's chapter — the lead picture you chose, or the earliest kept photo if you have not chosen one yet.
- A 'Photographs' page for each area: the first photo runs the full width, the rest two to a row, each with its caption beneath. A photo and its caption never split across pages.
- Under 'Moving pictures', a small printed code for each video you chose, with its caption and date. Scan it and the clip plays. Videos you chose from before the mission — the call opening, the farewell — print in Part I.
- Only the photos you kept in. Photos your family attached to letters from home stay in the archive but never enter the mission chapters.
- The book is built from the stored original of each photo, not the smaller copy the screen shows — and the original file itself is never altered.
Questions
- Does my missionary have to do anything new?
- No. They keep adding photos to the shared album they already use, attaching them to letters, or sending them in chat — the archive picks up all three. You paste the album link once; it reads only what the link already shows. You can also drop photos, or an album's .zip, straight onto the page.
- What happens when the same photo arrives twice?
- It is kept once. Every arriving photo is fingerprinted by its exact bytes and by what the picture looks like, so a re-shared or re-saved copy of the same shot collapses into the one already in the archive. Nothing is thrown away; the copy simply is not added twice.
- Are videos kept too?
- Yes. A video added to the shared album, sent in chat, or uploaded is kept as a video — with a still frame and its length — on its own Videos page, filed by area, and plays right there. There is a per-clip size limit meant for phone video, not long recordings.
- How long are the photos kept?
- Letters, chats, transcripts, and the book stay readable free, always. Photos, audio, and video stay live through the mission and for six months after it. Without a vault they may then move to sealed, restorable storage — never destroyed. What a printed code points at is carved out: it never seals, and the archive refuses to delete a video while it is chosen for the book.
Every photo they share, filed and kept. The ones you choose, printed.
Begin their archiveEverything else it keeps
