Welcome to Vortex-one.net
Vortex-one.net is an online portfolio for my photographic and Terragen work. They're only hobbies, as is this website, but I hope visitors can find something appealing here. I've tried
to ensure that a wide range of styles are represented, though currently I seem to be leading towards architectural photography.
| 16 January 2007 - Another update |
Looks like I might have to repurpose this website a little. Keeping this website and my Flickr account with much the same photographs really doesn't make a lot of sense - it just means this one gets out of synch because Flickr is easy to update. I think I might turn this one into a showcase for the my best stuff, keeping the Flickr account for a wider view of my stuff. I should also include more stuff than simply photography and Terragen stuff, too. The site isn't dead, that's for sure.
I'm thinking of changing the back-end stuff too - everything seems to be leaning towards flexible tags nowadays, so I'm finding rigidly defined categories a little constrictive. I'm going to work on making the website's structure adapt more to the stuff in the database. Have a few over-arching theme-based galleries to cover the obvious stuff, and then browsable ones based on what tags I've used. Quite a task, but it should be fun trying to implement it.
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| 20 October 2006 - It's all Flickr's fault |
| At least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Flickr's wonderfully easy of uploading and managing photo collections has sadly led to neglecting this website a little. Looks like I might have to write myself a utility to automate database population to make the process preparing photographs for upload quicker. Some new photographs have been added to prove that I'm not dead. More soon once I get the rolls of film developed.
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| 13 June 2006 - Finally, an update |
Well, that was a longer break than expected. A whole heap of life managed to get in the way of this website, I'm afraid - getting married, mainly along with spending six weeks in Peru. Oddly enough, photography has got in the way of this website, too. I've been too busy shooting, developing and scanning to get around to sticking some up here. The photography A-level I've been doing has also, until recently, been taking up close to 100% of my time. However, things have calmed down a bit now so I can stop neglecting this website.
I've finally gone medium format with a very nice Bronica SQAM. The advantage of the popularity of digital is that decent medium format stuff is incredibly cheap now. The difference in quality between this and my 35mm gear can't be overstated - it's wonderful. Also, the fact that the Bronica has to be mounted on top of a tripod to be used helps me a lot, too. I'm finding that I'm spending much longer on each shot whereas before I had a tendency to rush. The huge waist-level viewfinder helps, too.
The new 'branch', 'lakeview' and 'whitetree' pictures in the landscape and nature galleries along with the new cathdral door picture in architecture are from the medium format camera. The rest of the updates are mainly to the 'Peru' gallery, the picks from my six weeks there. I've still not finished sorting all my negs yet, so there are likely still some more to come.
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| 19 December 2005 - Loads of new pictures added |
Well, I finally got the hang of my new scanner and managed to process quite a bit of film. I've added a good fifty or so images to the galleries across the site. Most noticable additions are pictures from my second trip to Peru, and quite a few architecture pictures from around Lincolnshire and Salisbury.
At some point I will rename the 'People' gallery to 'People / Animals', I swear. I don't really think that squirrels are people...
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| 01 November 2005 - A partial fix to Google Image 404s |
| Prior to my previous post, I've set up a couple of redirects that have managed to fix the Google Image problem on the Terragen gallery side. Anyone clicking on one of my Terragen pictures in Google Image search will now be seamlessly redirected to the new location. I'll see if I can work out a way of doing it with the photographs tomorrow.
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| 30 October 2005 - Apologies to those coming in from Google Image search |
| If you're coming in from Google, you're probably finding an awful lot of 404 errors. Unfortunately, I can't do anything about this One of the downsides to switching how the galleries work is that it's temporarily spannered my site's listings in Google. The last time I changed the site layout, I mitigated this through a few rules in the apache configuration. The change is too fundamental this time to correct it that way. Hopefully, Google should update my site's entries soon.
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| 25 October 2005 - A couple of bug-fixes |
| It looks like there were a few wrinkles to fix, after all. Firstly, a small bug in the gallery script was causing some pictures to not appear in the correct galleries. That's been fixed now, so the galleries should look a lot more populated now. Second, a small bug in the html was causing the site to render incorrectly in IE, that's been fixed also.
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| 23 October 2005 - New site launch! |
I've finally gotten around to launching this new design that I've been working on for far too long now. There's still quite a lot left to do (notice that the random pictures bar is still empty at the moment...), but it's in a state where I'm happy for others to see it. A lot of text needs to be added and various tweaks need doing, but the launch of the site should give me the urge to get them done. If you notice any mistakes or have any suggestions, please let me know via the email link in the footer.
The galleries are still a little barren at the moment, but that will change in the coming weeks: I've got quite a few photographs to upload.
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| 18 October 2005 - New design launching soon |
| I've finally got the new site ready to go. It's all ready and waiting on my HD barring a few tweaks here and there. The new database backend makes adding photographs and other content infinitely easier than with the current static pages, so I'll be able to update more often. I'm currently in the process of rescanning all of my negatives, so the new galleries my look a bit empty on launch day, but should fill up soon. If everything goes well, the new site should be up before the weekend.
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| 22 August 2005 - Still here! |
This website isn't dead, I swear. It's just that time and circumstance have prevented me from adding much or finishing off the redesign - the backend code is complete, but I just haven't had the time to get the design to a stage where I'm happy. Also, although I've managed to take quite a few photographs I'm proud of in the last few months, all the prints have been used for either college or personal projects - I didn't have time to scan them in before using them. Hopefully, the situation should change soon - I'm saving up for a film scanner, which should make the whole process infinitely easier and allow me to give slide film a try. The website may be dormant for a while until I've finished the redesign, but the new database backend should allow me to add photographs much more regularly. Unfortunately, the second year of my photography evening class starts soon and to confound matters I'm getting married next year! Hence, not a lot of free time...
However, in an attempt to make up for this I've added a quick and dirty gallery of some of the better photographs from my second trip to Peru a few weeks back. Big thanks again to Andrea, for everything. You can find the new gallery here.
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