Welcome to the new home of Jeff Beck Photo. After much
consideration, I’ve decided to completely update my website and move to a more
elegant and powerful blogging platform. I’m now using squarespace’s Amélie
blogging template.
One thing I discovered about this template is image galleries
embedded in pages attached to the navigation don’t have the same functionality
as galleries embedded in blog posts. Blog post image galleries have a lot more
options. And, of course, I wanted the best looking galleries possible!
What’s missing is a gallery drop down menu and the ability
to navigate to individual galleries from a list. At first I saw this as a
drawback, but have come to embrace it for keeping the design streamlined. To
work around the issue somewhat, I’ve used a category block on the sidebar that
gives access to all galleries on the blog with one click. There’s no list, just
the number of posts that have been categorized as galleries.
The cool part for me is how much control I have over the
look and feel of my site without needing to know anything about code. I now
have more control over the appearance of individual galleries as well as the
option to add more detailed caption info to gallery images, and the ability to
create richer and more visually appealing blog posts. Add to that, the ability
for me to link my site with social media and allow readers/viewers to share my
content, and you can bet I’m excited.
The biggest issue for me with this change is the loss of all
the content I’ve published over the last four years. Thankfully, most of what
I’ve written for my blog was done so in Microsoft Word rather than written
directly in the blog interface.
Tip for all bloggers: compose your posts in your word
processing software rather than your blogging software. I’m really glad I did that now, because even
though I can’t transfer my blog directly from my previous platform to the new
platform, I can at least repost most of what
was on my original blog, which I plan to start doing shortly, in reverse
chronological order I’m thinking.
So far, most of what I’ve done is post galleries of images.
The galleries I’ve posted are even more tightly edited than my previous
galleries and contain larger views of some of my classic images, as well as
newer images, some never before published.
Please, scroll through my galleries, click on any thumbnail
image for a larger view, and hover the mouse over the expanded image for
caption info. Also, please check out my blog post Make Photographs About
Something, which was never published on my previous site, so I know you haven’t
read it.
Thanks for visiting Jeff Beck Photo!
