Self hosted photo options for the family?

Hi all,

So recently my immediate family had expressed interest in getting some kind of photo share platform for us to share vacation photos more easily. We’ve done a Dropbox with extended family years ago, but that sucked to hard that it even managed to put my non-techy family off of doing that again.

So what are some ideas you all can think of? I’ve seen Immich mentioned around here before, but I’ve honestly never set up even a real homelab or sever before, so that’s a bit daunting. Their google photos-esque UI is a bit plus as everyone but me uses that.

It wouldn’t need to be open to the internet, local WiFi would work as well really just need to be able to share photos between our phones more easily once we get back from a trip. I’ve got an older laptop with like 8GB RAM that I could run the server off of.

Sorry if this is really vague. I’ve just been given instructions to “find out what’s out there” by my non-techy family and I figured you all here would have a better idea of my options. Thanks!