January 1st, 2009
B.D. Andrews Photography
What I enjoy most about my projects is what I learn from them.
My friend Brandon is an excellent photographer. I built a simple website for him a while back but it proved to be very difficult to add his photography projects. All image sizing and uploading had to be handled manually through several complicated steps, as well as updating the code and navigation. So when we were discussing adding a blog to his site, I decided it was worth the extra effort to solve the photo handling problem, since displaying his photography was the purpose of the site to begin with.
We wanted to keep the design simple, clean and elegant. This was to show off his photography, and any textures or graphical flourishes seemed to take away from the impact of his images. The home page was where we wanted to showcase some of Brandon’s best work, and a slideshow, which can be edited any time by Brandon, does just that. Through a clever use of plugins and programming, I was able to put together a system where Brandon can upload a set of images and, through a few easy steps, thumbnails and resized images are generated along with an embedded watermark of his logo.
Brandon is also an iPhone user, and because the site is built on WordPress, he can update the site and even add photos from his iPhone from anywhere. This project turned out to be a great example of how far the Web has come in terms of usability and functionality. I can’t wait to use what I have learned in future projects. The site is now live and you can visit at www.bdandrews.com.
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