Howdy folks! I’m strictly an amateur, but recently thought it would be a fun exercise to try to collate some of my photos into a “portfolio” that I think showcases what I think are some of my best images, and my main interests as a photographer. Here’s the link: http://isaacullah.github.io/photography/.
I’d very much love to hear your comments and critiques on both the individual images, and how I’ve organized and presented them. Almost all are edited in Darktable from RAW, although some were JPEGs and/or were edited with Snapseed. The oldest image was taken with my Pentax *ist DL (RIP), and then there are a few with my old Nikon Coolpix that I had until last year. Most recently I’ve been shooting with an Olympus E-M10ii, (which I absolutely love!), and quite a few of them were shot with that. A couple of the images were actually shot with various Google Nexus phones I’ve had over the years. You know what they say: the best camera is the one you have on you!
A quick note about the website itself: although all the images are hosted on my flickr page, I decided to try my hand at designing a minimal gallery on my own website, which is a Jekyll site hosted on github pages. I started with a nice open theme called “Minimal Mistakes”,and tweaked the CSS a bit for the various colors and some of the content styles, etc. The site is mainly for my academic work and academic blog (I am a computational archaeologist), but I thought I could carve out a little corner for my second main hobby! (My first is blues harmonica!!). Anyway, if you happen to peak over at the other side of my website and have any questions about my “day job”, I’d be certainly happy to answer them!
I think Arizona Landscapes is your strongest folio by far, you have some wonderful landscapes in there.
I think the strongest photograph is Steaming Tandir, but I’d try and match the vignette you’re getting on the left on the right side of the frame as well.
Also your s p a c e d o u t titles make for a few awkward breaks on mobile, mostly the navagation.
This is actually something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately. It’s a natural evolution I think, upon reaching a reasonable level of technical proficiency, to begin to look at our photography as a part of larger construct. A theme of some sort that ties a series of our work together in a meaningful way.
I think it’s interesting because it’s a different beast than simply having a body of work that focuses on a theme (Ansel Adams is a good example of this - easy to spot, but his body of work is consistent in his “theme” and style overall - less so an attempt at tying sets of things together thematically for a statement or purpose). An amazing example of this black art of theme building a series of images to serve a greater whole is Robert Frank’s book, The Americans.
For me, thematically, your set Against the Sky is my favorite. I’d love to see a continuation and refinement of this idea. Possibly a little less tonemapping/halo on the last image in that set, though… The combination of the view/perspectives and the color blue would make for a nice strong show…
Same here. If I load it in a browser that doesn’t have that plugin it’s fine, but with https it is devoid of any styling.
My guess is it has to do with your styles path:
@paperdigits First off, thank you very much for taking the time to peruse my portfolio! Your comments are very, very helpful, and much appreciated!
Thank you! Actually, these are my most recent photos – all having been taken within the last couple of months. I’m getting ready to leave Arizona after living here for 11 years, and so my wife and I have been trying to get a few last road trips in to get our fill before we go. These are kind of like my “swan song” to Arizona, lol! I’m glad they come across well…
Thanks for pointing that out!! I admit that it was a “quick and dirty way” of doing that. I will try to find a more elegant way to adjust kerning. Probably there is some ready-made CSS code I can use…
Thanks!! And also thanks to @patdavid! I think this is my best image too, which is why I put it first in the first folio! I purposefully went with an off-center vignette, to try to draw more attention to the subject, but I do see what you mean. I will fool with it again to see if I can make it more balanced. BTW, this one was shot last year with a Nikon Coolpix super-zoom I was using before I decided to dive into MFT. It had no manual controls, and only shot in JPEG!! Still, the image turned out well, I think! Lol!
@patdavid Absolutely!!! This is really where I am at now. More than just shooting things that catch my whimsy, I’m really trying to start thinking more thematically about images, and how each new image will fit with the last and within the body of images I’ve been making. I agree, it’s a black art. The easier thing to do, as you say, is to focus on one general type of thing – and most of my folios so far have taken that route. I’m glad, however, that you mentioned “Against the Sky” as the folio that tries something different! It is actually my secret favorite theme, and one that I notice I was doing without even thinking consciously about it! I also agree that that last image is the weakest, and the most over-processed. It’s also the only one I really went out consciously trying find a subject “against the sky”. I may try to revisit the image in DarkTable, and pull back the reigns a bit on the processing!
@Tobias and @MLC: Thanks for pointing that out! I had not even thought about that. Web design is still very much something I’m learning, so this is very helpful for me to know! I will mess with the paths and see if I can fix the issue!
Very nice collection! I never thought about using the github personal pages for building a portfolio, and I might definitely follow your example.
I also agree with @paperdigits that the Arizona Landscapes is the best set in the portfolio, and personally I find the “Painted Desert” to be my preferred shot… reminds me of some of Salgado’s landscapes!
This will let you adjust as needed (and you can add various versions to a responsive design to accommodate various screen widths).
You can safely use https:// for those assets (assuming they’re available on https). That way they’ll work on https, and will still work just fine on http as well. Otherwise, you can go protocol-less if you’d like.
Thanks @patdavid! Actually, I had just found the relevant CSS code for kerning, and have made some adjustments. The pages I found suggested something like:
letter-spacing: 6px;
How does the #rem; differ from the #px; version? Is that what makes it responsive instead of fixed?
Also, I believe I have made all the paths just be completel relative now (ie. only /assets/css/main.css), so the https everywhere issue should be ok now??
@Carmelo_DrRaw Thank you!! Yes, using github sites has been a lot of fun, and actually a lot easier than I had thought thanks to many available libre jekyll themes that you can use as a starting point. If you do build one, let us all know – I’d love to check it out!!
Oh, and thank you very much for the kind comparison to Salgado!!! Those are some amazing images…
rem are “root em” units. That is, they are relative to the base (root) font size for the document. Unlike “em”, they will stay the same relative size within the document based on the base font size. So changing the font size on the document root will trigger a re-size of all subsequent “rem” defined font sizes.
This means you can change the font size of the base html element in css, and all the following rem fonts will scale accordingly.
This alone doesn’t make things responsive, but it’s an important part of adjusting layouts as widths change.
Possibly a little less tonemapping/halo on the last image in that set, though… 
The combination of the view/perspectives and the color blue would make for a nice strong show…
I purposefully went with an off-center vignette, to try to draw more attention to the subject, but I do see what you mean. I will fool with it again to see if I can make it more balanced. BTW, this one was shot last year with a Nikon Coolpix super-zoom I was using before I decided to dive into MFT. It had no manual controls, and only shot in JPEG!! Still, the image turned out well, I think! Lol!
