If you’ve ever explored this site very much, or been a reader of the blog for long, you are likely aware that I’ve associated both with my Flickr account. If you double-click on any of the photos in the blog (well, any of the featured photos — some incidental ones don’t do this) you’ll get a new browser window for the image’s corresponding Flickr page. I’ve even used a Wordpress plugin to provide a “gallery” page of images on the Flickr account.
It was probably the only way to get things started, but this hasn’t really been ideal for a number of reasons.
First and foremost, Flickr doesn’t provide any handy way for people to buy prints of images that they liked. I’ve wanted to set up some sort of storefront for my images, and lacking Flickr support, don’t have the time to manually handle orders, ship prints, etc. It also would be nice if I could display larger images — but with a watermark to deter thieves. While I’m at it, I’d also like a more professional looking gallery than what I can come up with using any of the Flickr plugins that I could find.
So here’s what’s changing.
I set up an account with SmugMug to host a selection of my photos — essentially my attempt to pick the “cream of the crop.” I’ll keep using Flickr, for smaller sizes of all of my photos (cream, or not). So the Flickr account will be for an unfiltered / ungraded / free look at my photographic portfolio. Then if you find a photo (or photos) you like, you can go to the SmugMug account to see it in a larger (but watermarked) size, and maybe buy a print (unwatermarked) of it.
The trick for me will be making your trips between the blog, Flickr, and SmugMug as easy and painless as possible.
So I’ve ditched the gallery plugins, and done some fiddling with the “OldDogPhoto.com” domain data such that now the SmugMug gallery acts like a page on this site (in particular, it’s at http://photos.olddogphoto.com). If you’re curious, the gallery’s entry page looks like this (today):
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be working to remove the Flickr links on the images I’ve posted, and add separate (probably text) links to the photo’s spots in the Flickr and SmugMug gallery. Meanwhile, I’ll be adding links to the photo descriptions on Flickr to direct people to the SmugMug gallery if they’d like to buy a copy. I’ll also be fiddling with the layout of the gallery pages in an attempt to make them look more like the blog pages.
This process should be almost invisible to anybody but me, but I wanted to give everyone a little “heads’ up” just in case you notice anything odd…
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