I just upgraded my desktop PC to a DELL XPS 8920 i7 Machine, Windows 10 Pro, so lots of re-installing software and moving hardware over to it (printers, scanners, etc). On a related note, I continue to use Zenfolio for my website (obviously) as I have not found a better/easier alternative at this price-point, though the speed of this site and the reliability of it is still questionable (poor compared to others). I also continue to back up my PC and its data (about 25 terabytes now!) using Backblaze, which I highly recommend (about $90 for 2 years of unlimited storage)
I also just returned from a trip from my home in Wisconsin to Metropolis Illinois, at the southern top of Illinois, on the Ohio River, across from Kentucky. This was to shoot the Total Solar Eclipse, as this town was in the path of "totality" where we had 2 minutes and 30 seconds of total blackout. The blackout (sky darkening) didn't really happen until a few seconds before totality, and as the sky darkened the cicadas (nasty locus like bugs) started to all scream loudly, it was amazing, weird, and so memorable!. I shot pictures using this set up:
Canon EOS 7D with Canon EF 100-400mm II f/4.5-5.6L IS USM and a Canon EF 1.4X III teleconverter with the 3 filters attached, one for UV, one for darkening, and one for polarizing: B+W 77mm UVA (Ultra Violet) Haze MRC Filter #010, B+W 77mm Neutral Density 3.0-1000X MRC 110M Filter - B&W 66-1066186, Kenko 77mm Circular Polarizer Filter, all mounted on a tri-pod using a gimbal head: Manfrotto 055MF4 Magfiber Legs, Opteka GH1 Pro Heavy Duty Gimbal Head
More photos of the event are HERE!
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I've decided to stick with Zenfolio as the new home for my photography web site, at least for the next year. I'm migrating the photos and material over from GoDaddy's JHillmer.com to this site, and while I know I'm giving up ease of portability (the ability to easily move the site in the future), this is a lot nicer than all of the long hand CSS and HTML editing that I used to do, and a lot easier than getting a content management system up and running. The new site transforms based on the device you are using, and connects well with social media, and my initial plan has some purchase options. I've not seen how well the SEO (search engine optimization) really works, but I've told Bing and Google about my new site, so they should be crawling it now. Photos that I just moved over from the old site are low resolution, which is fine for browser-viewing, but Zenfolio suggests I load full resolution versions for those people who might want to purchase. I'm doing that for new material I add to the site, which is about 5 years of material! (but for the existing material that I'm migrating over, that's another project for another day - to go and find all the hi-res originals to upload them too.
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From 2005-2015, www.JHillmer.com hosted at GoDaddy has been the home of my Wildlife and Nature Photography website and galleries. That site was build using basic long-hand HTML and a small amount of CSS, with the aid of HTML editors, initially Netscape's built-in editor, and then Nvu was the open source editor that I'd been using to maintain it. This became laborious, and from 2011 until now, many of my newer pictures were never added to that site. I kept thinking that I needed to move to a Content Management System, and modernize the site, especially for displaying pages on multiple-devices. After several experiments with CSS that failed, I just put new pictures on Facebook for friends and family members.
Now that I’ve retired, I have again looked at modernizing my web site, but this time, after looking at CSS options, including WordPress and Joomla, I moved to looking at photography sites that would just make this easier! I’ve landed on Zenfolio, and have begun converting content from my old site, and thinking about new content that has been missed over the years as I start loading JohnHillmer.Zenfolio.com
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