I am very happy to announce the launch of my new HTML 5 website at www.michaelclarkphoto.com. I have been working on this new update to my website for a few months now in between assignments and workshops. It has been a long process but the end result is a better website that looks the same across all platforms. This new HTML 5 website was built using the stellar APhotoFolio Design X HTML 5 template.
In the process of updating my website, I have also gone in and revamped all of the web galleries to show off some of my latest work. The Portfolio, in particular, has been reshuffled completely and I feel that it is stronger than it has ever been. In addition to the Portfolio reshuffle I have also reworked the specific image Galleries to include new work and a whole new category entitled “Industrial.” Over the last few years, I have been hired to shoot a number of green energy industrial sites including a recycling plant in the Netherlands and wind turbine sites in Kansas. It seems that my climbing skills as well as my lighting and portrait techniques have caught the eye of a few green energy companies and I have gotten the call to shoot for them. While climbing up a ladder inside of a 400-foot wind turbine is fairly mundane when compared to hanging off a 3,000-foot cliff, it is still quite cool to stand on top of a modern wind turbine and take in the view.
Of note, the only internet browsers that will work with HTML 5 websites at this point are Safari, Firefox and Chrome. In my testing, Chrome rendered my images the sharpest and surpassed all of my expectations. Safari, on non-Retina monitors, rendered my images quite soft when compared to Chrome and Firefox. Hence, to get the full experience of the new website, I highly recommend viewing it in either Chrome or Firefox. Also of note, the new website is optimized for Retina screens on the MacBook Pro and it looks phenomenal on those machines in all three browsers.
One of the main attractions to the new HTML 5 format was that I could have full screen images cycling on the home page as can be seen in the following three screenshots. These images appear fullscreen and I made sure that the menu and top logo was still clear and readable as the images cycle through.
One of the main reasons I switched over to the new HTML 5 template was that the images load incredibly fast – much faster than they did on my Flash website. Basically, as fast as you can hit the “next” arrow the images load without hesitation and these images are even larger than those on my Flash website! The images are sized so that they look great on a 27-inch monitor or the new 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops with the Retina screens. Below are a few new images on the new website.
Below is the opening image and a screenshot of the new “Industrial” web gallery. This image was shot while on assignment for NEXTera Energy in Kansas.
I have to say that the fine folks at APhotoFolio are continually improving their offerings and they are so great to work with that I can’t imagine using any other website service. My thanks to Rob Haggart and the folks at APhotoFolio for the new template and working with me on this new updated website.
