New Portfolio Site
My travel photography portfolio site had been looking a little bit dated, so I’ve gone ahead and updated the look of it and added a whole bunch of new content as well. Please have a visit and let me know what you think!
Portfolio Site Updated
The portfolio site that showcases a relatively tight collection of my images is now sporting a new design that better harmonizes with my blog. It’s a cosmetic change only, so if you’ve already checked out all the images there, I’m afraid there won’t be any surprises, but it’s a good excuse to go check out some photos anyway.
I hope you enjoy it!
Galleries Back Online
Last night, after discovering that the problems on my site went further than I had thought, I had to completely take down the improperly-functioning galleries. It appears that my site had been hacked and was suffering a little bit because of it.
I have managed, however, to get things mostly working again. The galleries are back and all the photos are available once again. After doing a quick test, the only thing that I can see that needs work is the search functionality. What’s strange is that the search functionality off the blog pages works great – it’s only when you search from inside the galleries that things don’t work correctly. Weird.
So, there is some maintenance yet to do, but we’re moving forward and things are looking up for the health of this site.
Still at It…
Well, things are looking up, but we’re still not quite there with the fixes to the site. Most of the site’s functionality is there, but there are a few behind the scenes fixes I’m making that will make for smoother sailing for me and, in the end, anyone reading this blog.
If all goes well, you shouldn’t notice much difference except perhaps slight increases in awesomeness.
Maintenance Ongoing
Yes, as I suspected, there have been a few hiccups with the changes. I was hoping I could sneak things through, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Looks like I have to re-learn a few things about WordPress…
Road Works Ahead
Don’t be surprised if a few things turn up broken here in the next little while. This site is need of a bit of maintenance, but I’m hoping I can get it up to speed sooner than later.
If only technology didn’t change so quickly!
Off to the Baltics
As of May 3rd, I will be away from home and travelling through the Baltic states. I begin my journey in Vilnius, Lithuania, then I head North through Latvia and, last but not least, I visit Estonia. I will depart from Tallinn and return home to Manchester on May 19th.
Once home, however, I won’t be staying long. After days after returning to my current home, I will be visiting my former home, Calgary. From May 24th to June 1st, I’ll be doing some catching up with friends and family and maybe even relaxing a little bit. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to both trips.
With these trips in mind, if you are interested in licensing any images from me, responses will be slower than usual and I expect I won’t be able to deliver digital files until I’m back in Manchester. If your project is on a tight deadline, you can find a large amount of my images through Alamy.
I hope your month of May looks as promising as mine!
Site Problems Fixed
My apologies to everyone who has tried to visit dsphotographic.com in the last couple of days. Some Tazmanian devil must have broken into my hosting company’s server room and wreaked some havoc…
A couple files got modified, but I’ve tracked down the bugs and things seem to be running smoothly once more. Now, when I say ‘a couple files got modified,’ I’m specifically not saying ‘I modified a couple files,’ because, well, I didn’t. The forces of chaos in the universe just simply decided my evening should be spent trying to figure out why certain files were now filled with gibberish or were cut off in inexplicable places. Thanks to the back gods for watching over me though.
All this reminds me of why I got out of web design – too many things just go wrong for no apparent reason! I think I’ll stick with photography.
Travel Photography Portfolio
I have just added a travel photography portfolio to the site. This micro-site provides a concise selection of my photos for anyone who is feeling a little overwhelmed by the thousands of photos on this site.
Please have a look and feel free to let me know what you think.
dsphotographic Now with More Awesomeness
A few weeks ago, I had decided to take some steps to upgrade my site. A couple new features here and there and I hoped it would start to fulfill the goals of the site in a more efficient way.
What I quickly realized upon making additions was that the core framework the site was insufficient for my needs. The thing was held together with duct tape and no more tape was going to make it solid. My attempts to improve upon what I had made this clear – I need some solid bolts or welding to underpin this thing, not tape.
I started to tinker with an alternative content management system: WordPress. It was like settling into a comfortable chair. It was so relieving to have my CMS work predictably. I told it to do something; it did it. Fancy that.
I started to develop a new, friendlier version of my site using WordPress as the engine. I was planning on developing it behind the scenes while my current site remained in place for any viewers who happened to come my why during development. A couple days later, that plan went down the tube when I learned that all the images on my site were no longer accessible due to who knows what error.
I couldn’t have people trying to find my work and ending up receiving only errors, so I took down the site and started to rebuild in earnest.
A short while later and I am counting down to launch. The site may look mostly the same to you, but to me, the difference is like riding a high-end, custom-built mountain bike with good shocks versus a rusty shopping bike with no seat.
And with that, let me welcome you to the new and improved dsphotographic.com. Please feel free to let me know what you think. I’m especially eager to hear from Windows users since I haven’t had much opportunity to test the site on a PC.
I now intend to use the brand-spankin’ new backend to deliver more content to this lovely little blog. When I’m not travelling, I hope I can be a good source of travel photography (and related) news. (With, of course, the occasional bit of unrelated, fun news thrown in just because.)
While travelling, it will be business as usual with my posts. Updates will come as time permits, but I always prefer being behind the lens and shooting marvelous locations to sitting behind a computer if I’m given the choice.
I hope all that’s not too confusing and I hope you’ll follow along.
So, WordPress is Pretty Hot
Yeah, I’m seriously regretting using Mambo now. I’ve just been using WordPress for about a half hour now and it is so much more user friendly. I really think I could have the non-gallery portion of my site up and ready to go in no time.
The problem is that pesky Gallery software. I think I could leave it as a standalone, but I would have to do some serious changes to the CSS files. That’s not really a big deal at first glance, but really, without being able to see it in IE, I’m bound to be in for a few surprises considering it’s so bloody hard to get that script to do what you want.
That’s all fine and good. I know how I could do that. One tricky thing though would be to try to get a search block for the images working on the non-gallery pages. Right now I can do that through Mambo (which, by the way, was a total fluke of coding and I still don’t really know what I did). I really don’t think I would have such good luck with WordPress. I really want people to be able to search my images from anywhere on my site, but I don’t know if that’s going to be possible.
RSS: Now With Less Suck!
I spent a little time yesterday making some improvements to the site. First off is a revamping of the RSS feed. Previously, the RSS feed generated by the Mambo CMS (Content Management System) had no real dates attached to the items. But, thanks to this hack, the RSS feed is now actually accurate.
I also added the ability to comment on blog entries and articles. I don’t really know if anyone will be interested in making comments or not, but at least now they have the option!
I would also like to add some kind of trackback or pingback functionality to the blog here, but I am now discovering that Mambo is really a horrible platform for blogging. I’m now kicking myself for using this particular CMS – something like WordPress would probably have suited me just fine. I didn’t necessarily need to have my gallery embedded into the overall CMS and I could have had them working together adequately without all the hassles of Mambo.
If only I were efficient enough to implement a new site CMS in a few days. I would give it a go, but a few things are going to hold me back from that. First off, I don’t have a PC for testing, so I can pretty much forget about it. I also don’t have a lot of time on my hands for this sort of thing. On a related note, the amount of content on this site is escalating every day and porting it over to another CMS would likely take a while. Oh well. I have what I have for now so I’ll see if I can make th best of it.
Print Prices Reduced!
There is no better time to make your walls pretty than now. I have just drastically reduced the prices of the prints available on dsphotographic.com. The new pricing structure can be see on both the But Prints Page and on the pages of each image.
To buy a print, simply navigate to the large image of the print you want to buy, scroll down to the ‘Buy a Print’ section on the page, and click the ‘Buy Now’ button correspond to the size of the print you want to buy. Happy wall prettification day!
Images Available at Alamy.com
While I’m away, if you are interested in licensing any of my images, I recommend checking out my images at Alamy.com. A large number of my images can be found there, so if you have an urgent need for an image, please see what’s available there.
Launch
Here it is. It’s taken me an age to put this together, but, I believe I can finally say that this site is ready for public consuption. I don’t plan on marketing the site just yet – the content is still a little sparse and I would like to be able to show off a bit more of my work before I start start promoting.
That said, there is still a fair amount of contant available and I hope you enjoy what you find. If you have any questions or comments, or if you happen to find any bugs, please feel free to contact me.
Lastly, if you are a Windows user, may I recommend using Firefox. This open-source web browser is a lovely little program and this page happens to look just a little bit better in it
Now, go look at some photos!
myLoupe.com
In addition to my images being available through Alamy Images, a selection of my photos are now also represented by myLoupe.com. To see my work at myLoupe, check here. As with Alamy, if I am unable to fill an urgent photo request while travelling, myLoupe can provide access to some of my photos.
Alamy Images
As of now, a selection of my photos are being represented by Alamy Images. To see my work on their site, click here.
When I am travelling, I will sometimes be unable to fill some photo requests – being represented by Alamy will provide 24/7 access to some of my images. So, if the status section of my site (top right) indicates that I am in the middle of some foreign jungle and you need one of my images immediately, check with Alamy to see if they can supply you with my photo.
dsphotographic.com Development Underway
The sun is shining. The birds are chirping. Mambo is mamboing and this site is starting to take shape.
The blog is up to date, The links section is populated. A new design is taking shape and looking not too shabby.
Of course, the ‘to do’ list remains much longer than the ‘completed tasks’ list. Much longer. However, with the posting of this news item, the news section has now started to get populated. Yay!
Darby Sawchuk is a Canadian-born photographer who currently resides in Manchester, England. He has travelled to over 40 countries and is always adding more to the list. He creates stock for multiple agencies and is available for assignments.
+44 0790 992 8932
