Well, here I am making another post stating that I’ve redesigned my website…again.
You see, I do have a habit of doing this. I make a website, get frustrated with it and then ignore it completely for years. Usually there is something wrong with it that frustrates me to the point of ignoring it. Plus it hasn’t helped that I haven’t taken many pictures yet this year.
This time is slightly different though, I had a very good reason to change the website. I was sick of paying money to Smugmug – my previous provider – because staying with them for 5 years was an expensive experience.
I put my images on smugmug with the hope I’d sell some pictures on it, but I haven’t. It was very US centric and really meant that it couldn’t send prints to many countries. Also in the 5 years I stayed with them they didn’t update the website experience once and it wasn’t great to begin with.
Just over a year ago Smugmug bought out Flickr from a very cash-strapped Yahoo so I was really hoping it would mean good things for both services and I even made a video about it but I’ll be the first to admit I was wrong. It seems Flickr is going the same route as Smugmug, sadly. It was time for me to move on.
Back streets near my house
So what next?
Lockdown really has given me the opportunity to think about my photography over the past few years. I’ve let other things in my life dominate various aspects of my life leaving very little for me to enjoy. So I plan to get back into shooting again. This time not for other people, but just for me.
I’ll be moving my content off other platforms and keep it on the one and only website I know that won’t change, my own. From now on, all my photos will be here in some form.
I don’t know if I want to shoot portraits again. While I enjoy the process, lugging gear around to various locations and lack of ability to regularly test I feel always on the back foot and I’m not the best at directing models anyway.
One thing I do plan on doing is doing write ups and or videos of my findings, something to keep me doing something creative – it may not be even photography related (I’m sure there would be some pictures), but maybe just posts about Japan in general.
Hopefully this isn’t going to be the one and only post I write here like many of the websites before it.
Wish me luck!
Chris
