What free covers at a graduation, and where it stops
Graduation is the last day two separate groups of people are in the same place. On one side there are parents and grandparents, filming from row fourteen, mostly capturing the back of a stranger’s hat. On the other there are friends who take the actual good photographs and who will scatter to different cities within a month. Neither group ever sees the other’s pictures.
One private gallery is the only thing that reliably crosses that gap, and free is enough to do it. Print the QR code and stand it on the dessert table — and put it on the party invitation too, as long as that goes out in the same week, because the free window counts from the moment you create the event and not from graduation day. Guests upload from the phone during the day; everyone with the code can open the gallery, so people see what is already there and add their own. Afterwards you download all of it in one archive from a private host page — up to 20 photos each, no cap on guests, no payment details.
The limits worth planning around are video and time. Video is paid only, and at a graduation the parts people want back are usually moving. And a free event is deleted with its photos after 14 days — which is exactly the week of traveling home and moving out. $19.99 (£15.99 in the UK) once buys unlimited photos and videos per guest, 12 months of storage and a guest book of written and filmed messages, which at a graduation is a surprisingly good thing to have.