Today I spent the day playing with wordpress to refresh my somewhat dated personal website that exists outside of Steem. The ultimate goal was simplification. My old site had my portfolio broken up into categories, the new site lets the holistic scope of my work sit an a mish-mash of haphazard variety.
I used to host my blog on wordpress before coming to Steem, and in fact, my first serious Steem posts were cross-posted in both places. I stopped doing that after making two posts on both platforms around two years ago.
A New website
Now, I'm all Steem, except for a small, minimalist front end.
The portfolio showcases my image-making over the years I've been undertaking this sort of work.
I plan to add to it regularly, I've starved myself creatively over the last forever, and this is a field that I really want to get involved in again once more.
The blog page links straight to SteemPeak (which if you're not using, you should use immediately, in favour of every other front-end on the Steem blockchain) - and the about page is a little blurb about myself written in the first person.
Finally, the Contact page is a simple web form which emails me form contents. Nice and simple.
Data, data, data
I have about 400GB of Photographic collateral, be that raw Photoshop files, prior video work that I've completed; and developmental work that helped me to arrive at the final versions of images.
About two weeks ago, a hard-drive in my NAS failed, which got me thinking about backups in more serious depth. Lucky, I'm smart, and have data backed up in a RAID 5 array, which means that I could tolerate the failure of a hard disk without the loss of any data. A short trip to the computer store, then, a short trip back, remove the old drive, insert new drive, and the array is back up again.
My NAS is a QNAP unit, and the software on it is excellent. Currently, I've started a sync to the cloud to ensure an extra layer of data redundancy between my raw files, the raid 5, and the cloud.
The future
As I stated about a week or so ago, I'm currently facing a group selection at my current place of employment. I'll find out on this coming Friday if I still have a full time job or not. It felt like a good time to update my website and ensure my personal branding was as much me as possible, without any fluff.
I also hope to be involved in photographing more events. I recently photographed a friend's wedding, and thoroughly enjoyed it - they really enjoyed the photographs I got, too, which made the feel good factor and satisfaction for me feel even better.
Photographic Envy
I've been following many excellent photographers on Steem for quite some time now, and most notably, @axeman's continued excellence has continued to inspire me in a desire to produce more polished photographic work. It isn't about the hardware, it is about using light better. :) There's also @barbarabezina and @chrisdavidphoto who produce work that I quietly admire for its quality, prolific quantity, and strong storytelling.
Seeing @justineh's happy snaps of all the steemians at the regular events she attends also makes me want to engage more with humanity, even though most people who meet me tend to hear me utter the phrase "I hate humans". The truth is, they all end up being a bit okay when you get to know them a little bit more.
Personal networking
I was at my chiropractor today, and she was saying that she and her partner are planning their wedding at the moment, and another patient of hers is a celebrant. He offered to do the ceremony for them at no cost. The next time I see her, I'll offer to take photos at her reception. I think it will be a good experience.
Even though I've got the photographic credentials (a degree in the field) - I don't have much professional experience plying the art. That's something that I want to try and change in the next six months or so, ontop of all the other bits and pieces that I have going on in and around my steem activities.
A plea to the community:
Are there any other photographers (specially portraiture) that I should be following on steem? I am aware of @portraitcontest and all the fantastic submissions to it, but I want more photography in my feed to curate, inspire, and to connect with more photographers.
Hope to be posting more photos more regularly,