This also heralds a change of assistants. My wife, Marcia, is no longer able to assist with most of my shoots because of her new venture. On your next session you can probably welcome Kris who has worked with other photographers in the area, kept Marcia’s sanity intact at our wedding, and has been on the other side of my lens before.

Hyak Photo Packages PDF Form

Senior Portraits – Prints Included – 3 8×10, 2 5×7, 6 4×6, 24 wallets*.
$150 – 1 hr studio session
$175 – 1 hr outdoor session
$250 – 2 hr indoor/outdoor session

Studio Portraits**
$150 – 1 hr studio session – 1 11×14, 3 8×10, 2 5×7, and 6 4×6
$250 – 1 hr studio session – 1 11×14, 6 8×10, 4 5×7, 8 4×6, and 16 wallets*.
$400 – 1.5 hr studio session – 1 16×20, 1 11×14, 3 8×10, 10 5×7, 32 wallets*.

Children’s Lifestyle – Natural Unposed Photography Series
$175 – 45 minute session – 1 8×10, 2 5×7, 6 4×6, 16 wallets

Maternity
$100 – 1 hr studio session – 1 11×14, 1 8×10, 2 5×7

Newborn
$150 – 1 hr studio session – 1 11×14, 1 8×10, 4 5×7, 24 wallets*.

In Home Studio*** – Studio Portraits in the Comfort and Convenience of Home
$100 – 1 hr session – All Prints A la Carte.

Grow With Time
$550 – 1 hr studio maternity session, 1 hr studio newborn session, 30 minute         “Free Studio Saturday” sessions monthly for first year with 8×10 and 8         wallets* from each monthly session. Includes all prints normally         included with Maternity and Newborn packages.

A la Carte
Additional prints are available by the print as an add-on to any package.
Full Resolution Digital downloads (with rights) available for $750.

All Packages
All Packages include online gallery which may be public, hidden, password protected, or require username/password login at no charge.

Weddings, Rites of Passage, and other photography available upon request.

* Wallets are printed in sets of 8 per pose.
** Limit 4 people, including children. $25 per person extra. Max 4 adults 4 children.
*** Limit 4 people, including children. $25 per person extra if space is available.

We’ve signed papers on the new studio space.

No, I’m not going to do away with in-home portraiture. This has very little effect on what I see as my primary focus which is bringing in a level of fun while reducing the headaches of going to the portrait studio.

So, if business as usual, what does going from hourly rental to having our own studio mean? Reduced in-studio sitting fees! Lower minimum time requirements! It’s simple math: the current fee schedule includes up to 1 hour travel time each way for in-home sessions and matches the minimum 3 hour studio rental that we have now. A fixed location means lower set-up times, less wear and tear on equipment, etc.

I don’t know how this will affect scheduling yet. Right now when you book a session a 3-4 hour section is blocked out on the calendar. That means I can do 2 or at most 3 sessions per day. As existing clients know we make an effort to keep a number of blocks available each week so that wait times are at most 2-3 days. I will be floating the idea of “studio days” where we’ll block off, say, 8am-6pm on a Saturday and divide that time into 30 minute sessions. That’s not enough time to do a family of 6 or a full maternity set but would be enough to do as part of a series. A newly born child could schedule a full newborn session in studio or at home and then use 30 minute sessions once a month to produce a first year wall collage.

But, there are some issues with the current pricing plan. A couple of these are obvious, but several of them are less apparent. In no specific order, the following are the big issues.

• “Package Price” (older printed material) or “Second Printing” (newer and web material) prices have been found to be confusing.
• A la carte pricing is nearly always lower per shoot than package pricing. This was in some ways the point, but I need to discuss it further below.
• Many inquiries of the “how much would it be to…?” type come in. 90% of the time you will be receiving a response from me. The vast majority of these do not end with a booking but consume 15-30 minutes of my time working up a package for them.
• There is no readily available path to get a DVD of selected high-resolution images.
• Package pricing is nearly always lower per print, so it is difficult to compare ahead of time the price difference between photographers.
• Packages make it easier to tell a friend about us because a lot of the services can be simply lumped together.
• Many wedding consultants will not list a photographer without a fixed package fee schedule.

To touch quickly on weddings, wedding packages have been in the works for a while now and will be rolled out next year after the exciting changes here have died down. Our schedule is allowing for very few weddings this summer so it made more sense to turn that into a long-term project that will be rolled out this fall. This may remove the a la carte pricing option for all weddings booked next year.

There’s simply no way to get around that a la carte pricing always looks higher per print than the packages. The economy is down right now, we can all see it, we all know it, and we are all looking for the best deal. When I developed our a la carte pricing setup, and yeah, I will take all credit and blame for that one, my feeling was that it would appeal to budget minded people like myself. It was last night when I was ordering some minor products and was almost ready to get 500 for 50 cents each instead of the 4 for $6 that I really needed. That was the wake-up call I needed to look again at bulk package pricing. The issue is one of perceived value, and I had forgotten that there is real value to perceived value.

So, the changes. Right now a la carte pricing is not going away, it may never go away. In the next few weeks we have a print run of marketing materials coming out and these will be updated to include some initial packages and pricing. At the same time the website will be refreshed in the same way. Feedback is welcomed.

The packages are as yet unnamed, I may put my nerd hat on and name them after the periodic table, or I may make names up, or go with silver, gold, marsupial, platinum, or even just I, II, III. At first these are simply going to be based on requests I have gotten on the phone or via e-mail and so have already worked up estimated pricing for. For instance an in-home session with 1 11×14 and 1 8×10 is already $100 since the print credit covers both of those. Yesterday I worked out that a 1 hour newborn session with 1 11×14, 3 8×10, 2 5×7, and 6 4×6 was about $150. I have to differentiate between the in-home pricing and the studio pricing. Right now both are the same, but that is changing soon there may be two separate price lists or there may be package price + surcharge.

All in all I am somewhat saddened that in some ways I see this as an end to my a la carte pricing experiment, but I look forward to working with our clients to bring forth high quality photography at reasonable package prices.

As all of our clients know, we store digital negatives indefinitely. We can run off prints of images from 2005 (our switchover to digital) and hope to be able to say that for many years go come.

As cameras have gotten more advanced it’s gone from approximately 1GB per shooting hour to 4-8GB per hour currently. This means that I abandoned DVDs and DVD-DLs some time ago as a back up solution except in specific circumstances. All storage is currently done using magnetic hard drives. (I don’t feel that flash-based SSDs are, as of early 2010, ready for general use).

The current workflow is as follows:

1. CF cards out of the camera are stored during a portrait session, or backed up on site to an Epson Photo Viewer with a 100GB hard drive.
2. After the shoot CF cards are read into the photo processing workstation (currently a 15″ Macbook Pro for portability).
3. All CR2 (Canon RAW) files are backed up to a network share and stored indefinitely.
4. CR2 files are converted to Adobe DNG (Digital NeGative). DNG is an open format suitable for long-term archiving and suggested by the library of congress.
5. DNG files are imported into an Apple Aperture library where shoot metadata is added, shoot metadata is added and basic editing is done.
6. The workstation is backed up hourly using Time Machine and Aperture libraries are regularly backed up to the network share.
7. Photo delivery to clients is done by uploading shoot picks to Photoshelter for the client’s web gallery. I upload full-resolution jpeg images so that even in a worst case scenario printable images are stored on by Photoshelter on both the east and west coasts.
8. After delivery the digital negatives are exported out of the Aperture library as referenced masters on the network share. I keep the thumbnail (1024px) images so that I can look images up as needed and I can work on the images any time I am on the network.
9. The network store is backed up to the off-site storage using rsync on a regular basis. For very large updates the specific new files are transported by hand on other media. (Hard drives, DVDs, etc).

Why is my backup workflow this complex? I worked in computers for years while photography was a hobby. In that time I saw a lot of hard drives and other media fail. It is not a question of IF it will fail, but when. While doing photography and other tasks I’ve had hard drives fail all around the world and I feel that the current system lets me keep as much data intact as possible. I also believe that the structure I have set up makes for a simple and relatively inexpensive upgrade path where my data follows along.

Why am I posting this now? Well… hit the part after the break to find out the trials and tribulations of last week’s series, yes, series, of hard drive failures and the specific pieces of hardware I am using right now.

Storage failures, be they failures of hard drives, optical media, computers themselves, or the enclosures we entrust our hard drives to happen.

Last week, and I haven’t gotten enough sleep lately to remember exactly which day I had a failure of the NewerTech Guardian raid mirror enclosure that had the pair of 1.5TB drives that store the referenced master files from Aperture. The remote storage is a pair of 750GB drives and was intact. (A pair of mirrored 1.5TB drives gives a total of 1.5TB of storage, not 3TB, so can be backed up to 2x 750GB drives). This gives me 3 actual stores of the data. I removed the 1.5TB drives and the advantage of mirrored drives is both hold an identical copy of my data. I used one to continue working and the other as a backup. Unfortunately I found that the drive I had chosen to work with was also experiencing problems.

While all of this was happening SMART reported an error with my laptop’s hard drive. Modern hard drives deal with bad sectors at the firmware level. They keep a number (varying between manufacturers and product lines) of sectors as spare so that when a bad sector is detected that address is swapped to a spare sector. SMART reported that my drive had not only just used up all of the spare sectors but had tried to allocate 3 additional spare sectors and errored out since it was out of spares. A new Hitachi 7200RPM drive was immediately ordered.

I had already planned to switch out the mirrored arrays in favor of a Drobo from Data Robotics with the upcoming move, so I went ahead to order that and found that Drobo had new products! After a few days reading reviews weighing pros and cons, I ordered a Drobo FS with 2TB Western Digital Green drives from my favorite outlet Other World Computing.

My new laptop drive arrived and would not accept an install of Snow Leopard. I had wanted to do a clean install and then just use the migration tool to transfer over my user data and applications as I had a fair number of errors in system.log relating to incompatible software, mostly that I no longer used, from the Leopard->Snow Leopard upgrade. This was more than slightly odd, but long story short the drive would spin up initially, but would fail to spin up after it had been powered down. The drive would work fine in a USB enclosure, though, spinning up and down without trouble. This sounds like an insufficient power issue and my laptop is a working computer that has been through the wringer so I felt it was a computer problem rather than drive problem. Josh at OWC and I poured over datasheets. The new drive used 1.1 amp to spin up and the old drive used 0.9amp. We settled on another Hitachi drive that had 0.9A spin-up and also a fairly good mix of other power usage and performance stats and OWC got it on a late FedEx shipment out and it worked perfectly. The previous drive has joined the small fleet of USB drives that velcro onto the back of my laptop for specific storage and backup needs.

The Drobo FS has had it’s own problems. Mostly this post was started to address those because I couldn’t find _ANY_ information online about these problems. The first off was simple, the Drobo FS arrived with a broken top drive bay. The door was bent and I just removed it. No big deal, but annoying. The second was that the second drive bay would not recognize the first two drives I tried in it (before giving up). Part of me wants to say, because I’ve become a paranoid conspiracy nut about my hard drives these days, that since I didn’t find the spring that I assume the top bay door should have had that it shorted out. I have no idea, honestly, so I popped off an e-mail to Data Robotics about it. I had purchased the enhanced DroboCare warranty (no, Drobo isn’t copying Apple at all with their naming and packaging *cough*) that morning so figured it would be no big deal to get another one shipped out. The rep I was e-mailing back and forth with never did seem to get, despite me including it on every e-mail, that I had paid for DroboCare and wanted a new system. At her insistence I did try another drive in the slot and yes, it worked. But no, I can’t run my business on a system that works best 1 out of 3. That just isn’t happening. It was sent off to an RMA specialist who called me the next day. Clayton was fantastic, added my drobocare info to the ticket and told me that it was only listed for RMA due to the drive door. When we discussed that an entire bay wasn’t working things went much faster and a new drobo was shipped out the next morning (it’ll be here Monday). So, Drobo may still be hit or miss. I really like the platform, both the BeyondRAID system that offers me dual disk redundancy and quick changes and recovery from failures and that it’s a relatively open platform for development that’s as simple as cross-compiling linux software for the ARM chip in the enclosure. But, I’m not sure that the support I received means I can suggest it as a business product yet.

The other problem has turned out to be much more complex. After copying terrabytes of data to the Drobo FS using the rsync drobo app I found that all of the samba shares were unavailable. Apparently all files on the Drobo FS need to be owned by root. My rsync scripts maintained numeric permissions because that’s how my backups have always worked. After chown’ing all of the files, restarting the Drobo FS and restarting my computers everything seemed to work.

Except that a number of the images were now being listed as Unsupported Image Type or something to that affect. Several thousand. Having roughly 10% of my images suddenly gone is not a pleasant experience. I attempted to consolidate them back into the library and got an a variety of errors, Error while consolidating (Can’t write file (no space)) was most common. I tried relocating them off of the Drobo FS and received Error while relocating (Can’t write file (no space)). I gave up on the device for a while and tried to point the references to the drive I had been using. This fixed some, but not all, of the image problems. I still was unable to work with close to a thousand images.

I pulled the backup of the library and relinked it to the original set of master images (doing this takes 12-24 hours each time, and this is probably the 3rd time). During this time I continued plugging error codes into google and seeking information on the problem. I found only 2 threads dealing with it on Apple’s support site, neither were solved in a satisfactory way. One was unsolved and the other was a small library (5000 images) rebuilt by hand. I have neither the time nor the patience to rebuild a library encompassing my entire professional career. But it put me on the right track, both people had the same problems I was having and both people were using Samba/SMB/CIFS to connect to their master images. The only difference between my actual deployment and my testing is that I had tested using AFP, the same file protocol that I had used before the Drobo when the master storage was external arrays connected to two OSX Leopard computers. The Drobo Dashboard, though, provides the convenience of an automatic mounting system but only uses Samba.

While I was rebuilding the library again over night, I did testing using another computer here and no matter what I tried using Samba and the Drobo FS I encountered the “no space” errors. This morning I had a thought that I should have had a long time ago. I can only say that lack of sleep while working on recovering the failed drives clouded my mind and also continuing to work on the exciting new developments that are now somewhat behind schedule. I _will_ report on that soon. I mounted a test volume using AFP, loaded a small project onto it from my library onto it and easily moved images back and forth. I’ve now picked up a little piece of software called Bonjour Mounter and for $15 I get the functionality of automounting any kind of network volume I want.

I have photos that need to be processed still, so I won’t be able to test it with the full library until I am able to leave it relinking over night. I will simply update this post if it doesn’t work. Mostly now here is a post that people can find on google somewhere it they have the same problem. I hope it is helpful. I also hope that anyone interested in the backend of the digital photography business also found this interesting.

Edit: Well, what worked in my small scale test to fix my Aperture errors above has turned out overnight to not work on the entire library. Back to the drawing board.

Edit Edit: There were two problems. Or maybe lesser and greater versions of the same problem. The previous fixed nearly every image, but there were a handful that gave the same errors over AFP. These remaining images appear to just have had corrupt master files. I first relinked these to the mirrored masters and so far everything is going well on transfer to the Drobo. Should be done by tomorrow Morning.

The blog has been quiet as there are some exciting developments in the pipeline coming along this July. Stay tuned as there will be specials and promotions to celebrate.

First up will be for Daniel on Facebook who wants to know how non-neutral reflectors affect non-photographic  light sources. I’ll be working out a way to cover it some time next week. My hope is to cover around one topic a month.

I encourage everyone to read my post on What Questions to Ask Your Wedding Photographer, which both gives some questions you might think of, and some that you might not that you should ask every photographer that you are considering. It includes my answers as they stood last year and I’ll be adding a new post or page to the site with the minor changes, mostly in equipment, that have happened over the weekend.

As usual, my wife and I will only be taking on a handful of weddings this summer due to extensive obligations. If you are interested in having Hyak Photography provide your please contact us soon so that we can at least pencil you into the schedule. (509) 205-1673 or the contact link at the top.

We are also very excited by our portable printer service for events and are looking to add more printers through the spring.

The blog itself, which was built around the old find your session method will be undergoing a redesign in the next few months to provide a more graphical experience showcasing both portfolio images and also images from recent shoots.

They live 2,000 miles away, so there isn’t a whole lot I can do for them from here, and, honestly, there isn’t a lot a photographer can offer. Many photographers in this situation make calendars as fundraisers, and I saw one very good poster, but the amount of money they bring in for the work involved seemed unreasonably small to me.

So, my contribution is very simple. If you have been diagnosed with breast cancer, are undergoing treatment, or have recently completed treatment your photo session is at no charge, includes an 8×10 print, and will have other printing discounts. No obligations at all, and no major caveats on what it doesn’t apply to. Portrait session of yourself, portraits of your family, boudoir so that you still feel sexy, or an image for a campaign for cancer awareness.

The offer is available indefinitely.

Concert went well, about 1.5 hours. Only took about 150 frames. Might have an idea for velcroing strobes to their carpet walls for tomorrow, need to see about finding where my velcro went. Tape doesn’t work.

Some of the interesting images from shoots that are in the editing phase right now:

Above: Portrait of a Soldier: Actually from a Thanksgiving portrait session, his expression just caught me.

Above: Taking Brazil by Storm: A chef setting out to make a name for himself and his pastry in Brazil.

Above: Almost time: Due today, shot last week. An absolutely wonderful mother and family.

There will be some more images added to the portfolio and also some new galleries from each of those shoots to wander through in the coming week.

I spent the evening with a wonderful family, 27 plates were served up of excellent food and then about 2 hours of group and individual portraits followed.

Images from the event will be online in a little under 2 weeks.

The second week of December is even still in time to get prints made to give as gifts. Remember that if you’ve just started a family your parents are going to want to have a framed 8×10 somewhere in their house!

As part of this partnership we will also be doing occasional photo shoots at the Sheep’s Clothing location to showcase customer creations created using their products.

Several new partnerships will be announced in the following months. If you are the owner or manager of a local small business and would be interested in partnering with Hyak Photography on either a one-time or ongoing basis please feel free to contact me. Some of the many options include photographic coverage of events, mobile portrait studio setups (including on-site printing), joint advertising campaigns, or discounted photography services in exchange for promotion.

Hiring a Wedding Photographer | Mydeejay.com

Included topics are photographer style (primarily photojournalistic vs. traditional), personality matching with the couple, film vs. digital, budgets, engagement sessions, etc. The article then ends with a list of questions you should ask a wedding photographer. I’m going to put a post break here and answer that list for myself after it.

Questions to Ask a Wedding Photographer

- May I see one or two entire weddings that you’ve photographed?

My first two weddings are in my gallery on this site, so absolutely.

- How many images do you shoot at a typical wedding?

I average about 100 images per hour, so roughly 400-600 for an average wedding.

- How many images do you typically deliver to your clients?

Once upon a time I said I would try to make best cuts and deliver no more than 200 images. Reality is that 300-400 will make the cut and be delivered.

- When can I expect to see my photographs?

I have become more photojournalistic as time has passed, especially since my own wedding. There are still some poses I certainly want to get, and I would seriously hesitate if asked to remove the family portrait time completely, but I lean more toward interaction on rehearsal day so that I know where, when, and how, and possibly had some input on those.

- Do I get the high resolution files?  Is there an additional cost, and may I make prints from those files?

I find myself torn on this issue. An 8×10 or larger from me is simply going to look better than an 8×10 from a 1 hour photo. I really prefer to have people see my work printed at the highest possible (within reason) quality available. On the other hand, a 4×6 is only going to be slightly better from me. The end result is that I will provide some medium resolution files suitable for 4×6s and I have deep discounts on multiple prints at larger sizes. If you are coming to me for your photography part of that is for the quality of my final prints, which will be how your wedding (or portraits) is represented to the world.

- What is your backup plan should you become ill?

I work closely with another photographer in the area. Her website isn’t ready to go yet, but you can see her work as she shot my wedding, which is in the gallery section of this site.

- Do you have back up equipment?

Yes. I am always saddened that some people don’t, a wedding is an event where a reshoot will never fully capture the emotion of the day. I have a backup camera, and a second backup camera that can work in a pinch. I have backup lenses covering nearly every focal distance I use at least twice. I have multiple strobes and backup wireless triggers. I even have backup light stands because once I had an entire light kit run over and completely destroyed, so it really is something that another set can be needed.

- Do I need to provide you with a meal?

It’s always appreciated. It does need to be something I can eat with one hand, though as I won’t get a chance to attend a sit down dinner as a participant.

- Do you bring an assistant?

I always prefer to, but for some simpler weddings this may be optional if cost is an issue.

- Can you photograph our ceremony without flash?

This is an area where it really does matter what kind of equipment your photographer has. Generally speaking equipment that can work in lower light is more expensive. While a friend with a point and shoot camera, which are starting to become really, really good, can produce similar image quality of portraits on a cloudy afternoon professional gear is needed to work without flash in both harsh midday sun and in the low light of an interior. It also then takes a steady hand and good eye to keep people in sharp focus as the wider a lens has to open up the smaller the area of focus.

Right now: Most likely. While I am predominantly a user of a number of wireless strobes I also do have a number of very low-light lenses.

Spring 2010: Cameras have taken epic leaps in low light capabilities this year. My current upgrade path includes switching to a Canon 1D Mark IV over the winter. In my print testing using the sample prints Canon and some of the pre-production reviewers have provided I can get similar quality down to 1/16th the light required by my current camera. This has be very excited for a number of reasons.

- What is included and what is extra?  Is there anything you recommend we add?  Why?

I don’t have any prebuilt packages. I will build a package on request, but I feel that the best, most cost effective way to order from me is to use the discounts and credits to build your own package. Fully one-half of the hourly charge can be applied to print costs and if you order multiples of your favorite shot there is up to a fifty-percent discount.

I do suggest getting a wall feature, but the specifics are dictated by space available in your home. If you have a large space the standout sets are fabulous. A canvas print is a very traditional, but also usually large option. I, personally, like the size and shape of 11×14s in a medium size frame, which is also conveniently fairly inexpensive.

Also, after my own wedding I have come to regard photo books as an indispensible item. I love albums, and the quality is fabulous in them, but they just are too expensive to leave out for anyone and everyone to handle. Photobooks (also often referred to as coffee table books) are printed using much lower cost methods. The initial cost tends to be half that of an album due to the amount of time involved in producing it, but the fantastic part is that the multiple discount is fairly extreme as it does not have to be redesigned to be reprinted. My wife is a 4th grade teacher and ours have spent much of their life at school, and are just about due for a replacement, something we’d never consider with a $1,500 album.

- May I see a price list for any of the products that I might want to purchase after the wedding?

A partial price list is available on this website that covers basic prints. A full (multi-page) listing is availble in person or via e-mail.

- Are other people allowed to take pictures while the photographer is?

Of course. I am even looking into the possibility of bringing a self-contained photo printer so that guests can leave their digital prints for the couple.

- Do you do pro-bono and charity work?  What causes are important to you?

I volunteer primarily in a non-photographic capacity for a number of causes. The IRS does not currently allow tax write-offs for artistic donations beyond the cost of materials, so I do not donate prints. I have done photographic charity work for a few non-profits, though, most recently David vs. Goliath.

7 minute photo shoot here. Heather is a friend of my wife and can be seen as the “senior flower girl” in our wedding. This was a combined fun shoot with possible advertising potential.

LCS 4th Grade Insect Project 2009-2010 – Images by John MacDonald

peace unto you

We ended up ordering 50, and included photos from our wedding and the honeymoon in Australia, can’t go wrong with kangaroos!

If you and your family are looking to send out photo christmas cards you’ll need to call schedule your photo session with enough time to spare to send the cards out. I try to process images as fast as I can, but it may take up to 2 weeks after the photo session for the cards to arrive without placing a rush order. If you are sending out in time for Christmas, the first week of December would be the absolute latest time to schedule your session.

You can pick out your template ahead of time at pickyourholidaycard.com or view my printed samples of some of the most popular 4×8 and 5×7 flat card sizes before or after your photo session. Cards with envelopes start as low as $1 each.

Stop by the Tri-Cities Women’s Expo, the Bzen Solutions booth has a raffle to win a free portrait session including a free 11×14 print. They also have some discount cards to hand out that are worth picking up.

The in-home aspect of what I offer is now my new focus. My studio has always primarily consisted of lightweight gear, most of which goes in bags that sling over my back. I’ve paid a hideous premium for my Bogen ultra compact (19″ collapsed!) lightstands. Half of my umbrellas are double-folds. My entire backdrop support system is one of the bags that sling across my back. A lot of my best children’s work has been in people’s homes already.

Moving completely to this has a lot of upsides, both for my and for my clients. For me there’s no studio rental overhead. For clients I don’t have to pass studio rental overhead on. (I still have the option to use a local studio, if clients so desire). But, really, that’s not the biggest thing. Children are more comfortable at home. My wife likes to tell the story of pair that raided their play chest and came out in dozens of costumes, wanting photos in each and every one.

The foremost of the new site features is the “What’s New” section, which doesn’t actually use that title anywhere. It’s the three columns at the bottom of the new front page. The leftmost is blog entries (ie this), the center is recent portrait sessions, and the rightmost is recent events, including the school sports that I cover. This replaces the “recent galleries” section that was automatically updated whenever I changed anything in a gallery, so often wasn’t actually recent. It also includes a link to see all, which I hope will make it easier for people to find their photos. I may also try out a <yourname>.domain system, probably with my confidentphoto.com domain so I could also do a splah page to help people find them.

From a technical perspective the site is now basically running on WordPress, which was a blogging engine that has emerged as a decent content management system. It’s a pretty flexible framework that I’ve made a lot of changes to to get the look and feel right. This is going to be an ongoing process. The galleries, and the portfolio slideshow, are done by PhotoShelter. PhotoShelter provides infrastructure to manage the many thousands of images I have online, provide online sales, etc.