What Have You Done for Me Lately?

For the past six or seven weeks I’ve spent just about every free moment working on a long overdue project to overhaul the content on my website.  This is something I’ve been planning to do for several years; the primary goals are to:

Bond Falls in Morning Mist black & white, Bond Falls State Scenic Site, Michigan

1. Cull images that are mediocre, redundant or both.
2. Impose a uniform size standard on all images.  A few years ago I decided that the images on the site were too small, so from that point on all photos that were uploaded were roughly 50% larger than their predecessors.  I did not, however, go back and increase the size of all previously uploaded images.  I’m doing that now.
3. Fix bad links.
4. Apply new processing skills, techniques and tools to all of the old images that meet the criteria necessary to remain on the site when doing so will enhance their appearance.

Lake Bridge in Autumn, Matthiessen State Park, Illinois

As you might imagine, it’s the fourth of the listed goals that’s the most time consuming.  Some of the images on the site are considerably more than a decade old.  I’ve learned an awful lot about image processing in that time and the majority of photographs would benefit substantially by applying my current skill set/tool set to the task of image optimization.

Newfound Gap at Sunrise, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee

The culling part of the process is a big deal as well.  In the past, due to an evident reluctance on my part to choose between images, I had the tendency to post anything I thought was halfway decent on the site, even if there were several other shots that were just about identical in appearance.  I’m rectifying the redundancy issue now.  Additionally, my standards have changed over the years and I’ve removed everything that I regard as run-of-the-mill (or worse).  I haven’t officially kept track, but my best guess is that roughly half of the images have been removed from the galleries I’ve updated; several galleries have been reduced in size by approximately 75%.

Foggy Morning black & white, Ft. Harrison State Park, Indiana

There were more bad links on the site than I care to admit.  I always knew that there were some present, but I had no idea just how many.  The process by which the update is taking place is allowing me to uncover most, if not all of them, and I’m fixing them as I go.

Blackwater Canyon at Sunset from Lindy Point, Blackwater Falls State Park, West Virginia

Still, the most intriguing part of the process has been the reprocessing task.  I’ve really seen some old images come to life as a function of using tools and skills that weren’t part of my kit once upon a time.  Images made since the beginning of 2012 are mostly unaffected by all of this, but anything older than that is a potential update candidate.  Every image accompanying this post is among those redone.

Sea Star Pair, Rialto Beach, Olympic National Park, Washington

So that’s a quick and dirty explanation why I’ve done so little blogging of late.  I’m about 75% of the way through the process and hope to have it completed within three weeks time.  I’ll get back to the images from my trip to Hocking Hills State Park in Ohio with my next post.

Chagrin River Falls, South Chagrin Reservation, Cleveland Metroparks, Ohio

Thanks for hanging in there with me.

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