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

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

You told me three things on our call. Their support goes quiet on weekends, which is when every single one of your events happens. The selfie matching gets it wrong and you cannot fix it yourself, so you wait while a parent stands in front of you. And they take 10% before you see a dollar of it.

All three are fixable. Two of them are fixable well. The third one I want to be careful about, because the honest version is not the one you would expect, and it is further down this page.

Nothing here needs to happen before your fall events. You keep shooting the way you shoot now, and we build underneath that.

“Sometimes the selfie that they upload and what my camera sees look like two different people.”

Amanda, on our call

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 built and I just had to switch it on. That was me getting ahead of myself. The galleries are done, but the checkout is the piece I am building now. It is first in line, because it is the only thing your November decision actually depends on, and I would rather you hear that from me in August than find it in October.

The order I would build it in

Sequenced around your calendar, not mine. The selling piece lands before your Zenfolio renewal. The event piece lands before your spring season, with real testing in between.

  1. This month

    Test the matching on events you already shot

    Before I build anything, I want to know it works. Your past events are the perfect test, because Waldo already produced the right answers. I run your photos and member selfies through the matching, then compare mine against theirs. If it comes back worse than what you have, I will tell you and we stop here. It costs you nothing but the files.

    What you doSend me one past event: the photos and the member list.
  2. August into late September

    Selling from your galleries

    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.

    What you doNothing yet. Keep shooting.
  3. Late September into October

    Your 30 days, on a real event

    Not a demo with sample photos. A real gallery, real families, real money moving. Kennedy’s September event is the obvious candidate if she is willing. You find out whether this holds up before you cancel anything.

    What you doRun one event through it and tell me everything that annoys you.
  4. November

    You make the Zenfolio call

    With a finished event behind you instead of a promise. If it did not hold up, you renew and I keep working. I would rather you renew Zenfolio for one more year than cancel it on my say-so and get burned.

    What you doDecide. Either answer is fine.
  5. October into December

    Event albums, matching, and the fix-it tool

    Sign-up with a selfie, consent handled properly since we are talking about kids, automatic matching, and the tools that let you correct it yourself in seconds. Built while you are running the gallery side, so it is not all riding on one deadline.

    What you doAnswer questions as I go. You know this workflow better than I do.
  6. January into February 2027

    Two rehearsal events

    Small ones. Not showcases, not the events you would tell people about. I want the first live run to be somewhere a mistake is survivable, because the first one always finds something.

    What you doPick two low-stakes events.
  7. Spring 2027

    Your season, fully on it

    By the time your real pageant season comes around, this has been through a fall of gallery sales and a winter of live matching. That is the point of the long runway. You said months, and months is right.

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 better matching. I am building the twenty seconds after it goes wrong.

  • Wrong girlTap the photo, pick the right member, done. It moves everywhere it needs to move.
  • Bad selfieSwap her reference to a photo from your own take, which is a better reference anyway, and re-run her matches.
  • Shaky matchesEverything the system was unsure about, stacked in one place, approved or rejected in one pass.
  • WhereOn your phone. At the event. While she is standing there.
  • Who you askNobody. No ticket, no waiting until Monday, no me.

That is the actual product. Not the matching, which everyone has. The fixing, which right now you are not allowed to do.

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 I need from you

Most of this is so I can tell you honestly whether this is worth doing, before either of us is in too deep.

  1. Your yearly total through Waldo.Not being nosy. It is the only way to know whether 10% with me is actually better for you than 10% with them, and if it is not I want to find that out now.
  2. Whether you are on their premium matching.The one that adds 5%. If you are, you are paying 15% and your number is bigger than you think.
  3. One past event, photos and member list.For the matching test this month.
  4. Your logo as a PNG with a see-through background.For the watermark. A solid white box behind it will look rough over a photo.
  5. The receipt for that $500 charge.Separate from all of this, but call them rather than email, and do it this week.

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.