I am insanely fortunate to have been able to spend hours and hours partaking of beautiful walks, taking photos, getting fit (or at least attempting to...) and I hope I shall always be this fortunate.
I am equally fortunate in that I appear to have the temperament that allows me to enjoy spending hours and hours editing photos from the hours and hours of beautiful walks, into creations that make my soul sparkle with happiness.
Walking begets photos, photos beget editing, editing begets blog, blog begets writing. And that makes me happy too, as I'm also fortunate in that I love playing with words!
It is, however, another world entirely to try and set up, for example, a website to showcase the end results of hours and hours of editing photos from hours and hours of partaking of beautiful walks!
Nevertheless, walking, photography, writing: a trifecta of happiness that come all wrapped up in this blog, has now been spread a little further across the interwebs in the form of my new PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE! WHEEEEE!!!!
It is, however, another world entirely to try and set up, for example, a website to showcase the end results of hours and hours of editing photos from hours and hours of partaking of beautiful walks!
Nevertheless, walking, photography, writing: a trifecta of happiness that come all wrapped up in this blog, has now been spread a little further across the interwebs in the form of my new PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE! WHEEEEE!!!!
Yes, it's called PORTAL! I was, at first, trying to find a name that suited both me, and the photos I like to take, and kept coming up with such pretentiousness that it was impossible to take myself seriously! (Well, as seriously as I can possibly take myself, at any rate!)
In the end I came back to the name I originally came up with when I first added my door photos to a facebook album back in August 2013: Portals. But just singular this time, to add a teeny bit of ambiguity. For portal does not only mean door, but it can also mean (amongst many meanings and now the word ‘meaning' has lost all meaning)... wait, I'll let Dr Google take over:
portal
ˈpɔːt(ə)l/
noun
- a doorway, gate, or other entrance, especially a large and imposing one.
synonyms: doorway, gateway, entrance, way in, way out, exit, egress, opening; More
- an Internet site providing access or links to other sites.
I'm still tweaking the look here and there, adding pages there and here, and valiantly battling against fiddling too much!
And there is so much to fiddle with, given half the chance! From the layout, to the font, to the choice of... everything really. I'm rather impressed with Zenfolio for this. It's not all straightforward, although on the whole it's simpler than Blogger. (I won't begin to tell you how long I enjoyed playing with colours and fonts and layouts and backgrounds to arrive at what I have just now on here, though!)
Some of the (many) reasons I adore ancient books is the feeling of the raised ink against a less-than-smooth page; the slight irregularity to every printed word, the unevenness of each letter. The font I chose for this blog is called ‘IM Fell DW Pica'. It's a Google font by the designer Igino Marini, based on the typesetting work of printer John Fell (1625 - 86) and his personal typesetter, Peter de Walbergen, and to me feels like the internet text equivalent of an exquisite late 17th Century air.
But I couldn't have everything I put online look the same. Well, I could, of course, branding and whatever other business ideal it would be to have everything I did look the same... but not everything I do is the same.
And so we come to ‘Century Gothic', the font I decided to use for the new website. I am split, and always have been, between the typographic ideals of the baroque and the 1920's, and ‘Century Gothic' (released in 1991 by Monotype Imaging), based upon a font called ‘Twentieth Century' (1937 by Sol Hess for Lanston Monotype), itself designed as a competitor to ‘Futura' (designed in 1927 by Paul Renner of the Bauer Type Foundry), has always been a favourite of mine. Although supposedly influenced by the Bauhaus School (I'm more of an Art Deco person myself), I'm still drawn to this font style as something synonymous with the glamour and modernity of the inter-war years. And it looks pretty!
So yes, I'm sure you can imagine the massive amount of enjoyment I get in playing about with page-designing tools, considering the amount of space I've just taken up on here discussing font choices!
The hardest thing about creating the new site, however, has been choosing the photographs that I think, to get down to brass tacks, may bring in some revenue. I could very easily add every photo I've taken that has received, for want of less tragic example, a ‘love' on facebook, but 1) I'd quickly fill up my allotted (and paid-for) space on Zenfolio with photos already taken (oh yes, a little blowing of my own trumpet there!) leaving little space for future ‘loves', and 2) as much as I delight in knowing my facebook friend list is filled with dears who share, at least in part, my artistic temperament, this is sadly not an accurate representation of the money-spending world at large. Because we all know artists, musicians, and anyone associated with the arts, whether literature, performing, or visual, are pretty much as poor as church mice!
So yes, choosing photographs to has been a bit of a challenge, and I suspect I'll change my mind many times about what belongs there and what doesn't, but that's half the fun, no? Why not keep everyone on their photo-procuring toes!
But enough talk, and more walk! The temperature has risen from the minus four of this morning to a robust zero degrees C, and the sun is shining its little heart out. I'm off to find my walking boots...!
A fascinating, yet humorous post - a talented wordsmith you most certainly are.
ReplyDeleteThank you, J! You say the nicest things! :)
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