How Rebuilding My Portfolio Let Me Rediscover My Photos
If you are like me, you have a library of many thousands of images, most of which have never made the jump from hard drive to the light of day where others could see them. In this article, I’ll discuss how a recent website redesign allowed me to discover some great images that had been long buried or overlooked and to give them a new home where they can be seen and appreciated by friends and fans alike.
Rediscovering Hidden Treasures
As I write this, the folders on my hard drive holding all my digital images contain 105,453 photos. That total includes all the photos shot with my various digital and infrared-converted digital cameras from 1999 onwards and those taken with my various smartphones. Those 105,453 images include beloved family photos and photos taken in remarkable places like Bali, India, Prague, Peru, and other breathtakingly beautiful locations. They also include my many B&W street photos and experimental infrared images.
What unites all these photos is that most of them have never been seen by anyone but me. Sure, I’ve shared some better images on Flickr or via a Facebook album after returning from a photoshoot or trip abroad. I’ve sold prints of some, turned others into calendars, and a few have even been shown in sleek black frames in galleries and a few museum shows, but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that only 2 to 3% of the images on my hard drive have ever seen the light of day.
Website Redesign Sparks Rediscovery
Although I’ve maintained a personal website that included a portfolio section showing a handful of my favorite images over the years, I must confess that until recently, I’d let my image portfolio fall woefully out of date. However, when F2.8 Press published a monograph of my images last January, I decided I needed to redesign my sad-looking personal website so that I could use it to market my monograph.
The basics of my redesign built to the point where I could launch my site as a tool to promote my monograph, I set out to update the portfolio section. My initial plan was to update the site with basic categories like travel, B&W, and Infrared. After creating my first Squarespace gallery, though, I found the process so easy that I decided to make a series of location-based galleries such as Istanbul, Brugge, Dublin, and my hometown of Croton-on-Hudson, NY.
Exploring New Themes
In creating new location-based galleries, I found myself digging deeply into my images from those locations. I discovered fantastic photos I had not looked at since returning from those trips. Still, more importantly, I found images I had glossed over when I initially tagged and rated the photos from a trip. By creating galleries based on narrow and non-traditional image themes, I rediscovered photos I had passed by many times before.
One image, taken at the Grand Haven lighthouse on a frozen lake in Michigan, came up in a search for the term “abstract.” I had bypassed this image when it was initially taken because it was not clearly identifiable as a lighthouse. But where it might not work as an image of a lighthouse, it worked perfectly as an abstract image.
Creating New Galleries
Creating the new portfolio galleries for my site redesign has allowed me to rediscover and sometimes fall in love with my images all over again. I intend to keep creating new galleries over time, and in doing so, I can dig into my photo library to discover hidden gems. For this article, I decided to create a new gallery with the theme of “Lost and Found.”
Embracing Concept-Based Galleries
If you want to create your own concept-based gallery, consider using tools like Excire. By using Excire, an AI photo management tool, you can search for specific themes and concepts within your image library, allowing you to rediscover hidden gems and approach your photography from a new perspective.
Ultimately, the joy of creating and curating these galleries is what matters most to me. Finding joy in the process of rediscovering my photos is a rewarding experience that fuels my passion for photography.
Share your experiences with online galleries and let me know your ideas for gallery themes in the comments!
