Official Cookie Policy and Tracking Technologies
How Faith West Photography uses cookies and similar technologies to keep this site running and to understand how couples find our work.
Last updated: 12 June 2024
Cookies Explained
A cookie is a small text file. When you visit this site, your browser stores it on your device, and it lets us remember small details between page loads— whether you've accepted this notice, for instance, or which gallery you were last viewing.
The technology is plain, even if the legal language around it rarely is.
Two kinds matter here. Session cookies live only as long as your browser window stays open; close the tab and they vanish. Persistent cookies stay put for a set period, sometimes minutes, sometimes months, so the site recognizes you on a return visit. We use both, and we explain the why of each below.
Categories of Cookies
Not every cookie does the same job. We sort ours into three working groups, and the distinction shapes what consent we ask for.
Strictly Necessary
These keep the site operating. They remember your consent choice and hold the basic state a page needs to load correctly. Without them, core functions break, so they run without asking permission— the law allows this narrow exception.
Performance and Analytics
These measure how visitors move through the site: which wedding galleries draw the longest dwell time, where people drop off, which pages load slowly. The data is aggregated. We use it to fix friction, not to identify you.
Advertising
Reserved for future personalization. Should we ever tailor what you see based on browsing history, we will use this category— and we will ask first. Today it is dormant.
Third-Party Cookies
Some cookies come from services we rely on rather than from us directly. Being honest about this matters more than tidy marketing.
Our content delivery network places functional cookies so images and pages load quickly from a server near you. That part is active now. The analytics and advertising providers described above sit in a different state: planned, not yet running. When we bring an analytics tool online, this page will name it and describe its purpose before any tracking begins.
Why announce something not yet in place? Because couples deserve to know the direction of travel, not just the current address.
Managing Cookies
You hold the controls. Every major browser— Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge— lets you view stored cookies, block new ones, or clear them entirely from its settings menu, usually under privacy or security.
There is a trade-off worth naming.
Block the strictly necessary cookies and parts of the site stop behaving. The consent banner may reappear on every visit, and certain pages may not hold their state. Disabling analytics cookies, by contrast, costs you nothing in experience; it simply removes you from our usage measurements. Choose accordingly, and revisit the choice whenever you like.
If a setting confuses you or a page behaves oddly after you change one, reach out through our Contact Us page. We would rather walk you through it than leave you guessing.
Revisions
This policy carries the date of its last update at the top. When we change how we use cookies— adding an analytics provider, say, or activating the advertising category— we will revise this page and move that date forward.
Material changes get more than a quiet edit. We will surface them through the cookie banner so the update reaches you in the moment, not buried in fine print. For the broader picture of how we handle your information, our Privacy Policy sits alongside this one.
Questions about any of it? The door is open.