Prepared for Amanda Upton Photography
Date August 10, 2026
From Keegan Sullivan

What it takes to get you off Waldo, and roughly when.

We want a better product, with actual support. Not a smarter algorithm, and not another company that goes quiet on a Saturday when your entire business is happening.

That means your galleries, your sales and your event albums in one place, branded to you, with the matching built in. When it gets something wrong, you fix it yourself in seconds. When you do need me, you get me.

Start to finish this is somewhere between a one and a three month build, and I can make that work. You keep shooting exactly the way you shoot now, and it gets built underneath you.

Where things actually stand today

Phramed is real software that photographers are already delivering galleries with. Here is the honest split between what works right now and what I have to build for you.

Working today

  • ✓
    Client galleriesCover image you choose, your colors, your fonts, your studio name on it. No Phramed branding in front of your clients.
  • ✓
    WatermarkingYour logo over the proofs until they buy.
  • ✓
    Full resolution downloadsOne photo or the whole gallery as a zip. Tested at 90 photos and 229 MB, and it came down clean in 34 seconds.
  • ✓
    FavoritesClients pick, you see the picks, you pull the filenames straight into Lightroom.
  • ✓
    StorageNothing expires and you do not run out of room.

Being built for you

  • +
    Selling from the galleryYour packages, your prices, free previews, then they pay. Money lands in your Stripe account.
  • +
    Event albumsGirls sign themselves up, upload a selfie, pick a package, and get their photos as you post them.
  • +
    Face matchingTheir selfie against your take, automatically.
  • +
    The fix-it toolThe part that matters most. It has its own section below.
  • +
    Consent and privacyProper parent and guardian consent on the sign-up, and their selfies deleted on a schedule after the event.
One correction from our call

I told you the selling side was ready to switch on. To be precise about it: the galleries are finished and running, and the checkout is the piece I am building right now. It is first in line and it is a short build. You should have the exact state of things from me rather than a rosier version.

The order I would build it in

One to three months for all of it, depending on how much of your feedback sends me back to change things, which I want it to. The selling piece comes first and it is the fastest, so you have it well before your renewal decision.

  1. First

    Matching, tested against events you already shot

    Your past events are the ideal proving ground, because you already know what the right answer looks like. I run your photos and member selfies through the matching and put my results next to what you got. You see the numbers before you commit to anything.

    What you doSend me one past event: the photos and the member list.
  2. Next, and it is the quick one

    Selling from your galleries, live

    Packages you build, prices you set, watermarked previews, a few free ones if you want, then they pay. Your Stripe account, your money, landing the same day. This is the piece that replaces what Zenfolio does for you, and it is the shortest build on this page by a wide margin.

  3. Then

    Your first event on it, start to finish

    A real gallery, real families, real money moving. One of Kennedy’s events is the natural first one if she is willing. I will be watching it live with you, not waiting to hear how it went.

    What you doShoot it the way you always do.
  4. After that

    Event albums, matching, and the fix-it tool

    Selfie sign-up, packages, automatic matching, and the tools that let you correct it yourself in seconds. Consent for the families handled properly in the sign-up, since we are talking about kids. This gets built while you are already running the gallery side, so nothing rides on a single deadline.

  5. Once that is live

    A full event with matching running

    Girls sign themselves up, find themselves, and buy, while you shoot. Anything the matching gets wrong, you fix on your phone before anyone has to ask you about it.

  6. By the end of it

    Your whole operation on it

    Galleries, selling and event matching, all in one place, with real events already behind you. Whatever you decide about the tools you are paying for now, you will be deciding it from experience instead of from a sales pitch. That is the whole reason it is built in this order.

The part I want to be straight with you about

This is the thing I would want to know if I were you, and it is the reason I think this is worth building at all.

I cannot promise you better face matching than what you have now. Not because I am not good at this. Because nobody can.

Face matching gets worse with stage makeup. It gets worse with styled hair. It gets worse under stage lighting. And it gets worse when the face belongs to a girl who is still growing, because a reference photo from last season is a genuinely different face from the one in front of your camera this season.

That is every pageant you shoot, all four at once. The testing on this is not close or debatable. Makeup alone measurably drops the accuracy of every system anybody has tested. Waldo has that problem. I would have that problem. Everyone selling this has that problem, and the ones who tell you otherwise are selling.

So I am not building you better facial recognition. I am building a better product around it, with actual support behind it.

  • Yours to changeEvery match the system makes is a suggestion you can overrule, not a decision handed down to you.
  • Better referencesPoint a member at a photo from your own take instead of her phone selfie, and run her again. You have better source material than she does.
  • One passEverything the system was unsure about, stacked in one place, sorted in a single sitting instead of one complaint at a time.
  • On your phoneAt the event, while she is standing in front of you.
  • When you do need meReal hours in writing, including the weekend ones, because that is when your events are. Not a ticket that gets read on Monday.

Everyone in this business runs on roughly the same recognition. What none of them is giving you is a product built around it that you can actually work in, and a person who answers when it counts. That is the part worth building, and that is the part I am building.

What it costs

Same percentage you are paying now, so nothing about your margin changes. What changes is who picks up when something breaks on a Saturday.

Setup, one time
$1,000$0
Waived for you. You are the first one through this and you are testing it on live events, which is worth more to me than the fee.
Per event
10%of what you sell
The same number Waldo takes. If you are on their premium matching at 15%, this is less.
  • •
    No monthly fee. Galleries, hosting, storage and every update are included in the 10%. There is no second bill.
  • •
    If an event sells nothing, it costs you nothing. No storage penalties, no minimums, no annual fee for a quiet year.
  • •
    Your Stripe, your money. Sales land in your account directly. My 10% comes off automatically, so there is never an invoice from me to pay.
  • •
    Card processing is separate and unchanged. Stripe charges the same 2.9% and 30 cents wherever you are, including where you are now.
  • •
    Support hours in writing. Before you sign anything, I will put my actual event-weekend hours and response time on paper. I am not going to promise you around the clock and then be behind a camera myself.

What this will not do yet

Rather than find out later.

Sports

Helmets, distance and players facing away break face matching badly. That is exactly why the big platforms use jersey numbers for sports instead. Pageant, cheer and dance work fine on faces. Sports needs a different piece built first, and I would rather say that now than sell it to you and miss.

Text message alerts

Email first. Sending marketing texts at volume needs carrier registration that takes weeks and is genuinely out of my hands, so I am not putting it on a schedule I cannot control.

Print fulfillment

Digital downloads and packages first. If prints turn out to matter for your events, that is a later conversation with a real lab, not something I will fake.

Why I can put dates on this

None of this is a pitch deck for software that does not exist yet. Most of the hard parts are already built and running.

You have seen itI rebuilt missunioncountyfair.com and moved it over in July.Two weeks from start to live, and you signed off before the switch. You already know how I work and how fast I answer.
Already livePhramed is running software with photographers delivering real galleries on it.Not a prototype. The galleries, the branding, the watermarks and the downloads are finished and in use today.
Proven at sizeA 90-photo gallery, 229 MB, downloaded as one zip in 34 seconds.That was the biggest technical risk in the whole product and it was settled months ago.
Not my firstI have built booking and Stripe payment systems three times before this.The checkout going in now is a pattern I have shipped and supported already, which is why I can put a range on this instead of a guess.
Same rails as the big onesIt runs on Cloudflare, the same infrastructure the large platforms use.Your photos live in the same class of storage. Nothing about this is held together with tape.