I last posted on my photo blog in June 2014. I last updated my fell walks (with any sort of meaningful write-up) in September 2013.
Truth be told, there are several reasons why. My interest in photography hasn’t waned, but the opportunities to get out and really create images have found extra competition. My day-job has been busy, my family deserving my time and attention, running and fitness taken a more prominent part of my life, which has helped me to become healthier.
And the reality was that, although I had coded my old site myself (with an embedded WordPress blog), I had never spent the time to develop the admin tools to make it easy to maintain. Each update was time-consuming, so making updates became harder to justify.
I still want to share my photos and experiences; I decided it was time to relaunch the site.
The Relaunch
Here are some of the changes:
- I’ve moved all of the content (including the galleries) into a WordPress site to make it easier to maintain – and hopefully, therefore, more likely that I’ll add content more often.
- This also has made it more mobile-friendly, as the old site was hand-coded in the days before smartphones were as ubiquitous as they are now. There are other advantages, such as scalable galleries; now I’m not limited to 16 images per gallery, although I’ll try to keep them at manageable sizes.
- I’ve moved the Fellwalking section. It was really a tag-on to the photo site in the first place but doesn’t fully fit with the aim of the site. I’m still visiting the fells and gradually ticking off the Wainwrights, although these days I’m equally keen to run them as walk them. The result is I’m going to launch a separate site to cover my running and fell walking exploits; I’ll link it here when I launch it. I’ll still include some of the more deserving photos on here from time to time.
- I’ve removed the print sales from the site. I’m still happy to take orders for prints, just email me instead (see the About page).
- I’ve got some old posts about the EU cookie directive coming into force. Since then, GDPR regulations have been introduced, which takes things to a whole new level…so there are changes to the privacy policy to reflect this.
- I’m still using the same kit I was when I last posted for my main camera. But I’ve also relaxed my photographic snobbery somewhat, particularly as mobile phone cameras have improved over time. I’ll often rely on my mobile or point & shoot, particularly when I’m out running or walking, so some will appear in here as well as my “proper” photos.
- I’ve done various things to tidy up, like removing the links page.
- I’ve changed the look and feel to make it fresher.
There will still be some old references to adding comments to posts – I turned off the comments on the old site because of spam and I’ve kept this policy. I haven’t gone back and edited the posts to remove references like this, they’re as they were posted at the time. One thing I will update is any broken links, both internal and external. This will take a bit of time to work through after the relaunch, so if you find one, think of it as a work in process.
I’m also going to have a look back through what I’ve been shooting over the last few years and add some new shots to the galleries and pages to the blog. I’ve been to a lot of places and events, including revisiting some old favourites. As a starter, here are a few shots that will give you an idea of what I’ve been up to photographically while I’ve “been away”.
