There are topics that can be put off for months at a time. Unfortunately, extensive website updates are one of them for me 😉
More specifically, it's about my gallery. Over the last few years, I've only added a few new images every few months and occasionally changed the image format size.
Now that my new ‘Lightroom PC’ (see also this blog article) has finally make it possible to work really quickly, I decided to ‘clean out’ my entire Lightroom catalogue after 7 years.
By the way, I'll tell you why I have a catalogue in this blog in about 2 months' time - as I'm planning to go into my “selection workflow” anyway, as I'm regularly asked how exactly I go about selecting images.
Over the last few weeks, I have successively deleted thousands of images and virtual copies and then labelled all images according to certain criteria - with stars and colours so that I could filter all gallery images at the touch of a button, for example.
Then I did the biggest update of my website and gallery so far, especially with the following points:
- For better readability, I changed the font size and colour scheme of the individual elements
- Instead of adapting the gallery as it is (remove the bad, add the new...), I simply deleted all pages and started from 0
- Thanks to the Lightroom preparatory work, I was able to export all the gallery images in a uniform size (1600 pixel long page) at the touch of a button, as my website was previously a mess after 7 years without customisation
- Then I re-categorised these images, as my old system had far too many pics in some categories, for example almost 700 images in the bird category
- I also redeveloped more than 300 (older) images with my current workflow; for example, all the Cornwall images from 2016 - I simply didn't have the skills to edit them properly back then
- In total I removed more than 600 images from the gallery
- And last but not least, I uploaded all images in the new structure - you will now find the following changes:
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- Solitary Trees: this category is new and is due to the fact that I previously grouped these types of pictures under ‘Plants’ and even lost track of them myself....I hope you like it this way!
- In the landscape category, I have greatly summarised Belgium, as I didn't like many older photos and have taken them out; in return, I have separated Norway into South and North - even though I was only in Southern Norway for the first time 3 years ago, I am already very satisfied with the small portfolio
- I have completely reorganised the birdlife category: as bird photography is my second photographic focus alongside landscape photography, I have also created sub-categories so that everyone can pick out something according to their own interests
- And I have also split up the ‘Nature as art’ category accordingly and you will now find three subcategories here:
That's ‘already’ it - all in all it was quite a lot of hard work...
You are now welcome to visit the gallery 😉
Have a nice day 👋
Best regards,
Thomas