Finally… It took me more time than I ever expected. I was playing with an idea from the beginning of 2021. My old site, now peacefully resting in the silicon heaven, was meant to be a portfolio page which I planned to update regularly. Unfortunately, I found out sooner than later that using WordPress was not the best idea and all the time invested was not efficiently spent. I kept on posting my photos on my 500px profile for some time, but each time someone contacted me and saw my domain, asking me about my photography hobby, I got embarrassed. Not about the photos I had there, I still like them and some of those made it through the cut to the new site, but about the fact that I haven’t touched it for many years…
Behind the scenes
In late summer 2021, I prepared the initial project plan and started working on the new site. I must mention that photography is my lifetime hobby, not my full-time job, so I had quite a limited time to spend on building my new website. Plus, when there was a chance to go out shooting, I went.The initial work started with selecting provider, research of what other colleagues do, brainstorming structure and features, and building the first website mockup. This was very engaging, I have to say, and took me just a few evenings to proceed. The second stage, consolidating my Lightroom catalogues & photo backup system, is a different story. It was such a mess!
I don’t know where I got the hoax that slow Lightroom is caused by having too many photos in the catalogue, but I ended up having almost 10 different catalogues for various time frames. Merging them together, cleaning up duplicates and identifying photos which I wanted to present in my new site took me over 6 months… Of course, there were other things to do at that time – Christmas time, me being sick and other stuff, but half year is crazy. That drags the story into early 2022, where I started the actual website development work.
Another 2 months later, in March 2022, I asked a few friends for beta-testing and started debugging issues which they found. The biggest one was obvious – it was not clear from the first glance that you can purchase every single photo in the gallery and have it printed! What a rookie mistake! 😅 I focused so much on presenting photos in the best possible way that I completely forgot that this option is not taken as granted. With another round of feedback collection, majority of issues got resolved, I was just about to finalize everything, but then the daylight-saving time started, caused longer days, and made me stay out more and more, enjoying springtime and summertime. I got back to development in late 2022, finalized some hiccups, localized page to Czech for my non-English speaking friends, ordered test prints and when seeing the quality of the print, decided to finally release the page to public.
What you find here
On the homepage I selected a few photos which I consider my favorite ones. For those that are interested just in best-of selections, I prepared 4 of them in different categories – aerial, landscape, nature, and cityscape. In other galleries I grouped photos according to seasons (spring, summer, fall and winter) and location with the biggest focus on the Czech Republic. If you are interested only in drone photography, continue to aerial galleries. And in case you seek for a photo print in a particular color, I prepared selections combining photos with one dominant color as well. Apart from photo galleries, there is a page where I will keep publishing my drone videos.
Next steps
I must admit, not everything is 100% finished. There are still some minor tweaks to be done, but I just needed to start publishing again, as I promised myself not to put any new photo online until the page is live. I had to cut out some pieces from my original plans too, there is not yet any newsletter signup, I plan to add it in the following weeks and months. This applies too to the photo selection – you can find on the website now only photos which I took until January 2022, meaning there is a pile of new photos waiting to be processed and published. And it’s a huge pile, believe me! I was very active in 2022, finding new locations, and getting better at weather prediction. Stay tuned, follow my Facebook and Instagram for new updates and feel free to send me any feedback via email, comments, or chat, I look forward to it!
Have a good one!
Tomas
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