So, here we go. I’ve been working my ass of these last couple of weeks to implement some site changes and implement some new stuff. I’m just about done, so here goes, what has changed:
Portfolio
I noticed on various platforms that the attention span of people isn’t what it used to be. (I mean, seriously, when have you last read a book for hours and not touched your phone in the meantime?)
When I post stories on Instagram, most of the time, after the eight’ story, people lose interest. And it’s not even my stuff I’m showing, it’s beautiful art from other people I find.
Also, when looking at my google analytics, I see that my portfolio pages are visited for an average length of 1-2 minutes. So no way people see all 80 photos I’m so proud of in that time.
So I did some research, and found that a decent portfolio should contain about 10-15 images max. Damn, that was a bummer, I can tell you that! I had to go through both galleries and filter out my current best! But I did, and I like it more now.
So here goes, if you want to check them out, go here:
Changes in names
As you can see I also changed the names of the portfolios a bit. I dont’t just shoot portraits, I don’t just shoot people. I do shoot portraits of people. Same goes for the street portfolio. I don’t just shoot street, I shoot indoors as well. And mostly there’s people involved. So I actually shoot life. You’ll see people in that street | life gallery as well.
That was a great realization. It means I can actually shoot whatever I want, whenever I want, without confining myself (and I do that to myself a lot) to the boundaries of a genre. So why still 2 separate galleries/portfolios? The People | Portrait one is mostly planned shoots, the Street | Life is spontaneous actions.
Bigger, Better
As I had to change these portfolios, I decided to also go bigger. Where I used to have a 1200px long-side for each photo, I upped the resolution to 2000px now. Probably no one will care. But I do. With a big ass screen, the 1200px images just looked too tiny to me! 🙂
Languages
As you may (or may not) have noticed, I have also removed the multilingual part for now. I’ve been working on optimizing the site for SEO (as far as I can understand the utter mystery of it), and the multilingual plugin I used didn’t help with that. At all. Actually, removing it didn’t help much either, as it broke my site. Talking about working my ass off. Damn!
Will it ever come back? I don’t know yet, but knowing myself, I won’t rest until I’ve fixed this and have my site run multilingual again.
And what about?
Yes, all these other beautiful photos I used to have up here. I know, I know. But don’t be sad. I’m not. I’ve actually had so much fun (apart from the breaking it) working on the site, that I am planning on keeping this up. No, I won’t update the portfolios on a weekly basis, but I’m finally going to start blogging on a regular basis.
How regular? I plan on 2 articles per month for now. Maybe it’s too much, maybe I can do more in the future, but with all the photos on my hard drives and stories I’ve still got in my head, I’ll be having my hands full. So with these articles, I’ll have other photos up again as well.
And that news…
YES! NEWSLETTER! I know right? Setting my goals high as it is with 2 blog posts a month, and then also implementing a newsletter and planning to send one on a (not so) regular basis? What’s the guy thinking? Right? Am I bored due to lockdowns and covid and stuff?
Yes, actually I am at times, but I’m also inspired. So if you want to receive a newsletter, no more than once a month, sometimes maybe once every 2 months, you can subscribe here, or use the form at the bottom of this post, and I will keep you up to date with all the latest blog posts, other news, heck, maybe I’ll even put in some exclusive never seen before photos every once in a while.
So that’s it for now.
~ B.B.
