About This Web Site

Thoughts from the Photographer

Bill Miller

April 11, 2010— ShadesOfNature.net has undergone another facelift. The new navigation buttons are from www.stunicholls.com/menu/skeleton_left.html. Stu Nicholls has a wonderful collection of demos showing creative use of CSS and other technologies. I adopted one of his creations with the goal of having the same site navigation links on each web page so you can get anywhere from anywhere. To keep me from tweaking each page's links in this navigation system because of the site's folder structure, I created the multi-level structure in a MYSQL database. On each page, I read the database and dynamically create the proper relative address links. This saves a ton of maintenance time.

I also incorporated Slideshow Pro, a professional Adobe Flash-based slideshow package. Slideshow Pro offers additional capabilities than I have had before. By default, each gallery runs as an automatic slideshow, or you can click on numbered links to individually view each image. Hovering over a numbered link will display a small thumbnail of the image that will be displayed. Moving the cursor into the image will display the image's title and caption. For the Landscape gallery, a series of individual albums are displayed for your viewing choice.

Album maintenance becomes very easy with this system. All images are first processed in Adobe Lightroom (and possibly further processed with Photoshop). An image's metadata is updated with title and caption information. Finally, Lightroom converts desired images to jpeg format, and they are saved in appropriate folders within the site. I modified a PHP script that is included with Slideshow Pro that sets the Album name based on the name I want that is stored in the MYSQL database. I also set the script to use the metadata title and caption.

Finally, I have added blog functionality from b2evolution. Consistent with my technical interests and direction, it is open-source software using PHP and MYSQL. B2evolution may, at this time, provide much more than I need or understand, but it looks like it will work for me. Although I have never blogged before or have spent much time looking at blogs, the movitation to add blogging is an upcoming return trip to Costa Rica at the end of April, 2010. I am hoping I can more carefully document this trip for Sandy and me, as well as provide daily (given Internet access) information and picture updates for friends and family.

All-in-all, the site is much easier for me to work with, so I can spend more time with photography and adding images to the site. Hopeful, it will be more fun for you to visit and view my photography.

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ShadesOfNature.net was originally created in 2006 using Dreamweaver 8. Fortunately, I had a lot of help from my son, David, a web designer for the Fox School District south of St. Louis. He spent some of his vacation time doing what he does at work every day. His advice and help was invaluable and I could not have created this site without him.

In 2008, I redesigned the site with the technical behind-the-scenes goal of maximizing the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a web design tool that separates the content from the format of the content. At the same time, I also upgraded to Dreamweaver CS3, but I am not yet getting the full value of this tool can offer. I still consider myself a beginner when it comes to web design. Still much to learn.

This site is best viewed on a monitor with a minimum screen resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels. I am not responsible for needless horizontal scrolling injuries that may result from using resolutions of 800x600 or even worse, 640x480.

It has been several years since I designed the first, and then the second and final version of my first web site, www.sundivers.org. When creating sundivers.org, I used Dreamweaver 3, and I appreciated the guidance and instruction from my friend and colleague at Anheuser-Busch, Brent Meyer, while learning about the web. The Sundivers site no longer exists, but with the redesign of Shades of Nature, all of the dive trip reports have been incorporated here.

Finally, my wife, Sandy, the true artist in the family contributed a lot of the design elements in all my web efforts. With 30 years of graphic design experience, Sandy has always been able to contribute a lot of good ideas. In addition, she has forgotten more about Photoshop than I think I will ever manage to learn. Sandy is also a superb photographer in her own right with a keen eye for the small detail that most people never see. I hope to add many of her images to this site as well. Until then, you can see her application of nature’s patterns in ceramic and other media art work at www.millerceramics.com . Sandy’s encouragement keeps me going.