As a web designer I understand that photography is a fundamental part of many modern websites. I’ve always appreciated photography but I’ve never really paid much attention to it. My iPhone combined with is the only exception to that.

My mother asked me what I would like for Christmas and the first thing that came into my head was a professional camera. I started to review some models and Ashley Baxter was kind enough to offer me some sound advice on a starting kit.

I ended up with the Canon 1100D which came with 2 lens, a 75-300mm lens for long shots and a 18-55m for the close ups (cost about £400). I also followed Ashley’s advice and purchased a lens (£85). I have to say the latter is absolutely brilliant. I have barely used the other two. I would highly recommended the camera and the 50mm lens to anyone thinking of starting photography.

I managed to get the camera in my possession a few weeks before Christmas to get some practice in before the big day. I must say that it was initially quite overwhelming. I was strictly instructed to avoid using “auto mode” from the start as it would make my life much easier in the long run. I did just that, reading up on ISO, aperture and shutter speed. I put together a blog post to help digest the information.

I have to say that since Christmas I have barely put the camera down. I’ve taken it everywhere with me (whilst not drinking) and although my initial shots were pretty crap, they are slowly but surely improving.

I started looking at a few websites to showcase my photos but I didn’t really like the obvious ones like Flickr and Photobucket. I came across a really nice site called exposure and it was absolutely perfect. Beautifully designed, the admin is fantastic and it’s relatively cheap.

I thought long and hard and eventually I decided to just build my own site. I could make it look exactly how I wanted, and although it might be more time consuming, I’m pretty sure it will be something I will take pride in and enjoy.

Enter Capture

Capture is now my online photo gallery. Every single photo-shoot is going to go into this gallery. I’m a little bit obsessed with filters at the minute – much to the amusement of other photographers – but maybe this is something I will grow out of as I continue to improve. Can I also add that I’m editing all the photos by hand on Photoshop. So at least I’m making the filters.

The site is completely static so I’m coding each page by hand. I’m using hammer to build my HTML templates. I’m using my retina plugin imagein to lazy load the retina/standard image.

I hope you enjoy browsing the website, I really enjoyed making it.

http://capture.webknit.co.uk/

Thanks for reading!

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