Please Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself

Its been over two years since I talked about the revisions on my website. Its about time that I went ahead and reintroduced the new site. It went live last year but it was never 100% complete. Portions of the site were stagnant with "coming soon" text in areas. Well now it is as close to 100% that its going to get for awhile. Updated portfolios, updated text, updated videos. Honestly I have had a tremendously positive response to the site since the last time I updated it. I can't believe I used iWeb for so long (first 5 years). The last year or so it has been built with custom code by mainly myself. Today alone I spent 5 hours on the site.

Let me go over the key sections of the newly designed site:

Home Screen:

The home page features a redesigned logo by Alexiz. I was and am still very happy with the logo. I find it very versatile, its also on the front of my new books! The homepage is dedicated to what matters most, a big nice large image viewer. Its a smooth square transition from image to image. Each section features 20 images. The home screen features a mix from each section. The new website is now much faster to load than its older versions since it is built in HTML5.

Menu:

The menu how has a smooth drop down that works easy on any computer or iPad.

About Me:

The new about me section features more text as well as an updated video. I also include a little bit of information about / links to my books.

The website can be accessed by clicking Portfolio at the top of the page .:)

Following this will be an updated version of the iPhone mobile site, it has needed an update more than anything else. Once again thanks for all of the support and kind words over the years!

-Peter

Year Five is Live!

Creating this site has taken far longer than I would have ever expected. Sure it is a completely rebuilt site but.... it looks about the same? (www.peterwphoto.com) Well it is not at all. This version is several steps ahead of the other site. This site is 100% based around my blog and the iPhone. Images are larger and wider than they have been previously. This is the very first flash free version of my website. This means that every single iPhone will be able to load all of my pages and interact with the site. Zooming in on the thumbnails and selecting the images work flawlessly.

I as a photographer see a lot of images that I like but may not want to capture 15mb worth of the image. Very often I will take a picture with the iPhone and do some on the spot editing, smile and then put the iPhone back in my pocket. I have gathered a collection of images that were taken by the iPhone and created its very own gallery page. I want to show off how capable this device is.

Now onto the other big player in the new version of the site, my blog. If you are a photographer and you do not have a blog you might as well give up. Blogs allow people to get to know you and also allow people to find you. Traffic to www.peterwphoto.com has doubled since I started actively updating my blog. I always tell people that I am one of the busiest photographers out there and the blog helps me to prove it! :) I have added a small blog snippet to the front page of the site to allow users to click one of the latest blog links that appear. I have also dedicated a page all to displaying the latest image large on my site. This page will constantly update so when users return they will see a new image even if they never visit my blog.

^Snippet

The Final large change has been a little video that I have been working on for a while now. To me the contact page has always been the most boring page of every website. A few people have done it right but most are downright bleh. The video is nothing fancy, its just a small amount of commentary alongside video and photos. The video of course will play natively on the iPhone!

Technically the site is very simple. I have a vision that everyone should be able to access the site without extra thought of where do I go? I have visited some photo sites where I as a very techie person had trouble viewing. I never want my visitors to be distracted by navigation just the images themselves. I feel that if you disagree with me you should send your site to your parents and see how easy they get about viewing your work. I want my visitors to stay as long as they possibly can and take in all of the visuals.

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www.peterwphoto.com

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In the end it is all about getting the site on as many computer screens possible. It's all about placing my work in a clean way on the web where I am confident to point people to. I can finally pass out all of these new business cards and postcards.

East Coast Image Release Dates

I have been one of the busiest people I know the last few months. Planning for my future and being the most active photographer I know. I have given a lot of thought to the thousands of images captured while on my East Coast trip in early November. I revise my website (peterwphoto.com) every year and this year will be very special. This year will be my fifth year as a photographer. Five years is quite an accomplishment in my eyes and a big tip of the hat to the immense amount of time given to what until this year was a hobby. I will be slowly releasing all of my favorite East Coast images in celebration and in honor of the launch of the fifth version of my website.  I will release the images in the two weeks leading up to that moment I bought my first camera, February 14th 2006.

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Please join me here, February 1st 2010 to celebrate my biggest release as a photographer thus far.

Presents a Sneak Peak

I apologize if you thought this was going to be anything from the East Coast trip... it's not. I am putting together a little video that will be featured under the "About Me" portion of the site. This video gives you a taste of what kind of energy is going on in my head. I hope you like it. The end and final product will look and sound nothing like this.

Click for iPhone Version!

PeterWPhoto.com update now Live!

I spent quite a bit of time being stubborn about the computer displays that I was going to support. I was building my website on my beautiful 24" iMac and always ignored how bad it looked on 13" computers.

1280x800 has always been the most popular screen resolution, therefore I decided it was time to support it. My goal was to redesign the site so that a 13" computer can see a full size image along with the thumbnails.

I started with a smaller header / top of the page because the old one was too big and didn't look so professional. I also added Hdr to the mix along with an actual Concert gallery. Hdr is highlighted in blue to represent that it is a new feature of the site.

I am very happy on how the site turned out. I added several of the new images to the mix and removed a lot of older images that no longer seemed to be at par with my current portfolio. I also added one new feature because I like my pictures big just like I like my music loud.

There is now a Full Screen button at the bottom of every gallery so those of use with larger screen can enjoy the images the size I want you to view them.

I have spent the good part of a weeks free time on the site and it is finally complete. If you do not know I redesign my website every year and relaunch it on my photo anniversary which is on Feb 14. Next February with be my fifth year of shooting and I am looking forward to the future. I really hope you all enjoy it :) Please give me feedback on the site and let me know if you run into any problems!

-Peter