Individuals attending an event or on a vacation often wish to obtain professional images of the event or special activities. As used herein, the term “event” may mean a single activity or multiple activities over the course of one or more days and the term “sub-event” means a single activity that is part of an event. For example, a cruise would be an event and boarding photos or photos from a specific party on a cruise would be a sub-event. Often, event holders employ professional photographers and/or videographers that offer to sell photos of the attendees during the event or afterwards. The event holder will often display the event images in a centralized location with the hope that one or more attendees will choose and purchase one or more images. The selected images are then provided to the customer at the event or at a later time. The unselected images are discarded which, if printed for purposes of customer review, is wasteful and environmentally unsound. Alternatively, the event holder will allow the potential customer to review images on a viewing system provided by the event holder or the photographer/videographer which requires the potential customer to select and purchase desired images at the event, or view low resolution or water marked versions of images via a website on the attendees' own computer at a later time. This method of operation—taking a photo, editing and printing the photo, displaying the photo in a gallery and hopefully selling that photo has been employed for the past 20-30 years. One of skill in the art will appreciate that this method of selling photographs has the drawback of an increased time burden related to editing photos that may never be purchased. It would also be desirable to avoid the costs for printing, materials, labor etc., associated with preparing photos that may never be sold.
Another known method involves selling the rights to images prior to an event or to offer photos electronically for purchase during or post event. Instead of the event holder or photographer maintaining exclusive possession and control over the electronic versions of the images, the images are stored on a portable storage media like a CD, DVD, memory card or thumb drive and are provided at a cost to the customer. The system allows the customer to use, copy and modify the purchased images. The drawback of this method is minimal interaction between the event holder and/or photographer and the customer. Thus, opportunities to sell related collateral items, such as calendars, coffee mugs, tee shirts, etc. that incorporate the images, are reduced or lost to the event holder or photographer.
Thus there is a long felt need to provide a system for facilitating the transfer of images to customers or potential customers without having to generate physical images for review. The following disclosure describes the system that allows customers and potential customers to obtain, modify and purchase image-related items in a cost effective and expedient way.