a Dodecanese chronicle
If you have forgotten
Three things to do, and what comes back when you do them.
Kept short on purpose
Everything you have to do lives on one page: Share your photos. No app, no account, no password. This page explains what each part of it is for, and roughly what happens next.
Any browser will do — Safari, Chrome, Edge, whatever you already use. Nothing to install, no account, and nothing Apple-only about it.
Worth doing once: put the log on your home screen, so it opens in one tap instead of being a link you have to go and find. On an iPhone, tap the share arrow at the bottom of the screen — the square with an arrow coming out of the top. Then scroll down, past the row of app icons and past Copy and Add Bookmark, until you see Add to Home Screen. It sits further down that list than anyone expects, which is the only reason this is hard. On Android, open the ⋮ menu and choose Add to Home screen. Both work in Chrome and Edge as well as Safari.
The one browser to avoid is the little one built into WhatsApp. If you tap the link straight from a group chat, choose Open in browser first — the built-in one drops photographs without telling you it has. The share page spots this and says so.
While you are at it: install the free Google Drive app and sign in with any Google account. You will never see it again, but with it installed your photographs queue and send themselves when the signal comes back. Without it, an upload on bad island WiFi simply fails.
Tap Upload photos & videos and pick as many as you like straight from your camera roll. Videos are welcome. Each file shows ✓ in the log once it is safely with the studio — that tick is your receipt, and you can close the page as soon as you have it.
A box then opens asking Anything to say about those? One line is plenty. It is attached to those exact photographs, so your words land beside the right frame instead of somewhere near it. This is the single most useful thing anybody does.
If a frame stopped the whole deck, put it in the hero folder instead of the general one. Hero shots get the big treatment: full width, top of the page, first in line for the book.
When it lands you are asked why this one? Answer in a sentence. That sentence is usually what ends up printed underneath the photograph, in your words rather than ours — and it is the one thing none of us can supply for you.
A different open question appears on the share page each day, and it is the same question for all nine of you. So it works at the table: somebody reads it out over dinner, everybody argues about it, and whoever had the best answer taps Say it instead and says it into the phone.
Thirty seconds is plenty. Ramble — rambling is better than tidy, and the tidying is our job. Not a talker? The typing box underneath already has the day’s question waiting in it.
One for each day, in order, so nobody has to look at a phone to start the conversation.
A restaurant, a stay, a person worth knowing — put the name in the Black Book box on the share page and nothing else. Just the name. No review, no stars, no marks out of ten.
We will ask you about it properly afterwards, when you are home and can remember what the room smelled like. That conversation is what makes the entry; a rating never does.
Tonight’s reel plays the day’s photographs within minutes of them landing. Good for passing a phone round the cockpit after dinner.
The day’s page — pictures, captions and your words put together — is live by lunchtime the following day. Never instantly, because a person makes it. If something you sent is not on a page yet, look in the reel: it is almost certainly there.
The book comes after you are home, once everyone has had a chance to say which photographs they cannot live without.
I sent one by mistake. Any of you can take a photograph out of the log at any time, from the Take one out panel at the bottom of the share page. No permission needed and no explanation expected.
There is no signal. Add the photographs anyway if you have the Google Drive app. They queue quietly and send themselves the moment you are back in range.
Who can see this? Only people with the link. The site carries instructions telling search engines to ignore it, so it will never appear in anyone’s results. Treat the link the way you would treat a house key.
Anything at all not working — hello@maisongourraud.com.
The log can sit with your apps and open like one — no download, no account. On an iPhone or iPad: open this site in Safari, tap the share arrow, scroll past the row of app icons, choose Add to Home Screen. On Android: open it in Chrome, tap the three dots, choose Add to Home screen. Once it is there, it opens with its own icon — and everything you have already read opens even with no signal.