I have being practicing photography for a few years now with my favorite theme being nature and landscapes, but I also have portraits, city views, etc. which I'm organizing into photo albums.  I created slcmarco.com to make my collection of photographs available for viewing to anyone with an internet connection.

Photography is just a hobby for me, but a very intriguing one. For instance, why is it that my photographs don't look anything like the ones I see in Magazines?

Always moved by this type of questions I became an avid reader, mostly online where one can find what the latest trends are, commentary and discussions from virtual communities of professional photographers, countless how-to articles, etc.  I also frequent the Public Library and local book stores for more in depth content on a particular topic.

After some time, I began to understand photography better and my skills showed improvement, but regardless of one's abilities or technical proficiency, sometimes it is possible to produce a photograph that can touch a person in a way that transcends its technical qualities or imperfections.

I have managed to take some images that I cherish, but needing a vehicle to share them, I have used some of my spare time in the last few weeks to study Web design, and the technologies around it, to create this personal website.

At the moment slcmarco.com is just a lab and I'm currently experimenting with photo galleries. More content will come once I figure a way to organized it. Visit the What's new page for a list of new content.

Design Considerations

Through photography, Web Design has become a whole new interesting topic for me. Besides the obvious design considerations that every site should have (common navigation for every page, certain color scheme, etc.) I'm following the less is more maxim.

• All photographs in the site are my own (no stock photos)
• Every page should display at least one photograph
• Photo albums have introductory text and thumbnails
• No commercial Ads

The following are some of the design considerations that I thought of at the moment. These can vary greatly from site to site and they may even change on the same site over time if you come up with a design that you like better.

• All pages on the site have a similar look and feel

• Same navigation bar on every page

• Every page should display at least one photograph

• No stock images, every photo is one of my own

• No background images but instead a solid color

• Pages are 980 pixels wide, centered, with no ads

• Photo albums have introductory text and thumbnails

• Clicking on a thumbnail displays a larger version of it

Tools I used to create this site

I wrote this site from scratch using Windows' Notepad,
HTML 4, and CSS 2.1.  Photo galleries were created with JavaScript and jQuery routines. Image thumbnails and photo crops for headers and footers were created with Photoshop CS3.  Development and testing was done under Windows XP with Mozilla Firefox browser ver 3.6.

If all of the above acronyms start to sound like mumbo jumbo to you, visit the FAQ section to learn more about them.

Images

All of the images that you see on this site are my own, including the banners on top of each page that are crops from full size photos.  I may use Photoshop if I need to crop a photo or change its resolution to prepare them for Web or email. I also use it for B&W conversions, to adjust levels and tilted horizons.  If I only need to quickly slash of a photo or to capture a screen, I use MS-Paint.