The Agency Workflow: Managing Multiple Photographers

For photo agencies covering major events—like the Super Bowl, Oscars, or political summits—collecting images from multiple photographers simultaneously is a chaotic challenge.

The Problem

Traditionally, agencies have faced two bad options and one expensive one:

1. The "Shared Login" Nightmare: You give every photographer the same generic ftp_upload login.
   • Result: File collisions (DSC0001.jpg overwrites another DSC0001.jpg), no way to know who sent what, and chaos for editors.
2. The "Hardware" Solution: Handing out physical ethernet cables or running cards back and forth.
   • Result: Too slow for the modern news cycle.
3. The "Enterprise" Solution: Building custom servers with complex user permissions.
   • Result: Expensive and hard to maintain in the field.

The Rilavek Solution: One Pipe, Many Senders

Rilavek solves this by decoupling the Destination (where files go) from the Identity (who is sending them).

Concept: The "Event Pipe"

Think of a Pipe as your master container for an event.

• Pipe ID: pipe_oscars_2025
• Destination: s3://my-agency-bucket/2025/oscars/

Concept: Individual "Senders"

Think of a Sender as a credential for a specific human or camera position.

• Sender A: Jim
• Sender B: Sarah
• Sender C: Remote_Cam_1

Step-by-Step Setup Guide

Here is how to set up a clean, accountable workflow for a team of 5 photographers.

Phase 1: Director Setup (The Desk)

1. Create the Event Pipe:
   • Connect a Pipe to your S3 bucket.
   • Name/ID it clearly (e.g., pipe_oscars_2025).
   • Crucial: Enable Identify Sender in Path (or similar "Sender Folders" option) in the Pipe settings. This automatically forces each sender's files into their own subfolder.
2. Create Identities:
   • Go to Senders and create distinct senders for your team: Jim, Sarah, Mike, etc.
3. Distribute Credentials:
   • Give Jim his unique username: Jim@pipe_oscars_2025
   • Give Sarah her unique username: Sarah@pipe_oscars_2025
   • (The password can be rotated per event or kept static per photographer).

Phase 2: Photographer Configuration (The Field)

To ensure files land in neat, organized folders for your editors, simply verify the directory setting. Because you configured the Pipe to handle sorting, the photographers don't need to manually type their names.

• Jim's Camera Settings:
  • Host: ftp.rilavek.com
  • User: Jim@pipe_oscars_2025
  • Directory: / (Leave as Root)
• Sarah's Camera Settings:
  • User: Sarah@pipe_oscars_2025
  • Directory: / (Leave as Root)

The Result: structured S3 Data

As soon as they start shooting, your S3 bucket will populate automatically with this structure (Rilavek handles the routing):

s3://my-agency-bucket/2025/oscars/
├── Jim/
│   ├── DSC0492.jpg
│   ├── DSC0493.jpg
├── Sarah/
│   ├── IMG_9921.jpg
│   ├── IMG_9922.jpg

Editors can now sync specific folders or ingest the entire bucket, knowing exactly where files are coming from.

Redundancy: The "Rule of Two"

For high-stakes events, rely on the "Rule of Two": one is none, two is one. You can configure your Pipe to replicate every upload to a second destination automatically.

• Primary Destination: s3://fast-editing-bucket/ (AWS S3) - For the editors.
• Backup Destination: s3://cheap-archive-bucket/ (Backblaze B2 or Wasabi) - For permanent archival.

The camera only uploads the file once to Rilavek. We then split the stream to both destinations simultaneously. This gives you instant off-site backup without slowing down the photographer's connection or doubling their mobile data usage.

Accountability & Tracking

Even if a photographer forgets to set their directory to /Name/ and dumps files in the root, you never lose tracking.

• Rilavek Audit Logs: In your Dashboard, every single file transfer is tagged with the Sender ID.
• You can instantly answer: "Who uploaded this out-of-focus shot?" or "Did Sarah send her files yet?" simply by filtering the logs by Sender.

Best Practices Checklist

• Unique Filenames: Ask photographers to set a custom file prefix in-camera (e.g., JM_ for Jim, SR_ for Sarah) as a secondary fail-safe against overwrites.
• Send Only Selects: To save bandwidth and editor sanity, instruct photographers to use the "Transfer with SET" or "Protect" button to only send their best 5-star images, rather than "Auto-Transfer All."
• Revoke Access: If a freelancer leaves the job mid-event, you can delete their Sender immediately without affecting the other photographers or changing the main FTP password for everyone else.