Photo Finder 4000

Ok, I am a photographer. Or I take lots of pictures, at least. Or I take lots of pictures and obsess over processing them. And then people use them all over the Internet (I use a Creative Commons license on all my photos, much like I use on this Glot).

Ok, so I’m a photographer. Today I was looking at this magnificent gallery of photos taken on the Suisun Bay Mothball Fleet. The photographer has a pretty nice gallery (although it could be a little smoother, photo transtions and such). And then I realized that her site actually links up with her Flickr. Huh, that’s a cool trick. I then found the very clever and useful Flickr Photo Album for WordPress plugin from Joe Tan. It allows you to put up galleries of your Flickr photos onto your own site — you know, like a “real” photographer.

My, my, it seems like I could get some real use out of that. For a while I’ve had a back-burner project to start selling some photos (although the feasability of that remains to be seen). I’ve always liked the idea of showing my stuff right here, where I can control the presentation. And, honestly — don’t tell ’em I said this, though — I’m beginning to think a lot of people consider Flickr kind of a photographer’s ghetto, where every level of quality or involvement is allowed, and where the best aren’t necessarily advanced forward. Having your own gallery is more than simply a mark of pride, or effort, or professionalism, but also a mark of status.

Thus begins the odyssey to create something worthwhile. Things I hope to incorporate eventually into my very rough, yet functional gallery:

• CeeBox for pop-up image enlargement
• javascript toggles to show/hide sets
• integrated commenting, so a visitor never has to leave the site
• browsing by tag
• javascript pagination — so there’s no tedious reloads
• Flickr collections, favorites, galleries, view counts, contacts (maybe)
• a classy dark layout