Client Onboarding Portal

When a heritage documentation commission comes in, the first few days usually decide how smoothly the whole shoot will run. For us, that meant replacing a chain of emails and shared folders with a single portal where clients can see the project taking shape from day one.

The portal started as a simple request from a regional NGO that needed to track three concurrent documentation projects across the delta. They wanted to know which villages had been covered, which interviews were still pending, and how the photo archive was being organized. Instead of sending status updates by hand, we built a lightweight system that pulls from the same catalog we use in the studio.

What the client sees is a timeline of the shoot: field days logged, locations confirmed, contact sheets uploaded within 48 hours of returning to base. They can leave notes on individual frames, request additional coverage of a specific site, and download selected images in print resolution once the edit is approved. The system does not replace the editorial process. It simply makes the process visible.

The first full run covered a two-month documentation of stilt-house restoration in Tra Vinh province. The client followed the work week by week, flagged two locations for a second visit, and approved the final selection without a single in-person meeting. Since then, the same portal has been used for a floating-market survey and a rice-cultivation study, with the structure adapting to each project's scope.

• Field-day log with location and weather notes attached to each entry
• Contact-sheet uploads within two days of each shoot
• Frame-level comments for requesting re-shoots or additional angles
• Print-resolution download queue after final edit approval

The portal is not a product we sell. It is an internal tool that grew out of a practical need, and it stays tied to how we actually work. For clients, it means fewer status emails and a clearer sense of what the archive will contain before the final delivery.