New website

Sometime after my 2007 end Namdapha trip, I stopped updating my website. The old system was not scalable, was too dependent on linux-gimp-php-apache-mysql-imagemagick workflow. So after keeping it stagnant for more than a year, I finally got down to re-writing the website.

The new system is not platform specific and the whole thing works more of less on exif information. I have also moved to Adobe Lightroom on my machine to tag/manage my photographs though I still do most of my post-process in combination of Capture NX, Photoshop and Gimp. In the process, I managed to clean up my 5 years worth of wildlife photographs. It took more than 2 months, but was worth the hard work as now I feel I have control of my photographs again.

I have updated my new website with photos till end of 2007. But in the next few days and weeks, I will upload few hundreds of photographs from 2008 and all the fresh ones from this year.

So do go check it out and do let me know if you encounter any bugs or have any feedback.

58 Comments

  1. Anonymous · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Nice work on the site.. Great to see so many new photos 🙂
    Though i liked the design of your journal as it earlier was

    -Sandeep R.

  2. Anonymous · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Hey Kalyan,
    Have been regularly following your site. The new site design is pretty cool. One thing i find though is the sharpness in some of the images seems to be lacking when we factor it is coming from the stellar 200-400. It is not a big deal but still it seems to take the punch out of these lovely images.
    Some examples

    http://kalyanvarma.net/photo.php?id=1248&tag=all

    http://kalyanvarma.net/photo.php?id=1246&tag=all

    Keep those beautiful images coming.
    Thanks
    Mahesh Devarajan
    P.S : Not sure if you recollect my name I am the one who was asking about the 200-400 and also tried a couple of shots using that during the INW Mysore meet last september 🙂

  3. Anonymous · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Looks good.
    New photos are awesome too 🙂

  4. anushsh · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Love the maps feature. Finally we get to see some latest photographs 🙂

  5. sriniram · March 3, 2009 Reply

    I was on http://kalyanvarma.net/photo?id=1265&tag=all and clicked the “previous” link, this took me to
    http://kalyanvarma.net/photo?id=&tag=all

    and spewed the following errors. I think this a problem with handling the end of record set.

    Warning: getimagesize() [function.getimagesize]: Read error! in /home/kalyanvarma/public_html/photo.php on line 19

    Warning: getimagesize() [function.getimagesize]: Read error! in /home/kalyanvarma/public_html/photo.php on line 50

    Warning: mktime() expects parameter 1 to be long, string given in /home/kalyanvarma/public_html/photo.php on line 65

    31 December 1969

  6. deponti · March 3, 2009 Reply

    I did check it out, and my first reaction (without knowing all the tech stuff) is that it looks really attractive and streamlined. Will keep visiting and give you more detailed feedback.

    Thanks for the new pics!

  7. navina · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Looks fantastic!

    Your name on the top right seems a little squished. Maybe the column/image needs a width and a height.

  8. nandish_wild · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Search by location and animal is missing

    Hi Kalyan,
    Search by place and animal option you had previously was an excellent feature. I guess its missing in your new site. I would definitely love to see it back on your new site

    Regards,
    Nandish

  9. Anonymous · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Great site! Only suggestion – you might want to rethink the gray background in your journal – it does nothing to your pictures, I think – an anonymous nobody 😉

  10. Anonymous · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Re: Search by location and animal is missing

    It is there under Photographs – Tag Cloud.

  11. kingsly · March 3, 2009 Reply

    That’s the first time I’ve seen that date.

    The epoch began early for us in India!

  12. nfpgasmask · March 3, 2009 Reply

    AWESOME

    Kaylan, I’ve been on your friends list adoring your photos for years. So glad to see these updates. I particularly love your herp shots. Bravo!

  13. admin · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Change is tough. But after endless research, this new one proved better.

  14. admin · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Hi Mahesh,
    There is no sharpening that is being applied to the images. I will fig that out and then update the images. 🙂

  15. admin · March 3, 2009 Reply

    I have some 200+ images shortlisted from 2008. All of them will come soon.

  16. admin · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Thanks for pointing it out Srini. Forgot the one liner basic check :).

  17. admin · March 3, 2009 Reply

    I wonder why its pushing the date back by a day. You think its got to do with the time zones ?

  18. admin · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Re: Search by location and animal is missing

    I think people stopped using drop-down menus now. They prefer a series of links and hence moved to the new format.

  19. admin · March 3, 2009 Reply

    As in you suggest a while background for the site or the journal ?

  20. kingsly · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Yes epoch uses UTC as reference.

    Your box probably probbaly has a negative offset.

  21. Anonymous · March 3, 2009 Reply

    This looks really cool….:) For the visitors it will be treat
    -Dharani

  22. sriniram · March 3, 2009 Reply

    Yeah, that’s why I included the date. I’ve forgotten how PHP handles arrays, but assuming that’s the record set used in the code, some languages will return -1 to indicate end of array limit. Epoch -1 would also yield this value. The TZ explanation seems to make sense too.

  23. Anonymous · March 3, 2009 Reply

    That would be the best, I would think. Your leapord pic don’t look as vibrant with the gray background as with the white.

  24. Anonymous · March 3, 2009 Reply

    I was suggesting for your journal. Your other pics, as in the gallery, have a very thin edge of gray, which didn’t jump out as the journal’s did. But, you are the boss.. 🙂

    White would be good though – my vote, (for you pictures’ background)

  25. Anonymous · March 4, 2009 Reply

    Looks good

    Kalyan,

    The new site looks good. Better navigation capabilities compared to the previous one. Noticed that you removed the copyright text from the images and moved to Non-commercial Creative Commons.

    Looking forward to seeing the 2008 collection.

    – Dinuraj

  26. Anonymous · March 4, 2009 Reply

    I spent some time on our site today. Very nicely done! Photo pages are perfect and information is concise. Love the new layout a lot.

    Just one suggestion is – it would be awesome if the journal content sits inside this framework – especially when we click for “Comment on this”. 🙂

    Great going and all the best!

    -Pramod Viswanath

  27. Anonymous · March 4, 2009 Reply

    Photo Display Software

    Hey Kalyan,
    Which S/W do you use for putting up your photos? I loved the way it puts is up.

    Thanks.

    Regards,
    Gautam

  28. admin · March 4, 2009 Reply

    Re: Photo Display Software

    Wrote the code on my own. Though I am using lightroom for all the keywording/captioning etc.

  29. admin · March 4, 2009 Reply

    Thanks for the feedback Pramod. I wish the journal could fit in 🙁

    I have been using livejournal for 8 years now and I find it really tough to move away from there as the community is very big over here. I have to spend some time with livejournal to make the comments page also look like the site. Its on my next todo 🙂

  30. admin · March 4, 2009 Reply

    Re: Looks good

    Will put the copyright signs eventually though. Yes a CC licensing post is coming up soon 🙂

  31. jbritto · March 4, 2009 Reply

    I love the way this journal is perfectly integrated into http://kalyanvarma.net/journal
    How is it done? Did you use a feed?

    The site looks very professional.

  32. thaths · March 5, 2009 Reply

    Love the new site.

    No RSS/Atom feeds, though. 🙁

    Seriously, you cannot expect your fans and friends to remember to visit your site every week. Even if you don’t want to send out full sized images through your feed, at least smaller thumbnails (or even the textual caption) as part of a feed would be very helpful.

  33. admin · March 5, 2009 Reply

    Heh. Yeah, its in this weeks todo. Ofcourse I do not expect people to keep coming back to the site. Will let you know as soon as I sort out the RSS feed (need to revive http://kalyanvarma.net/photoblog) along with it.

  34. admin · March 5, 2009 Reply

    Used a small php lib which reads RSS feed and spits it out the way out want it.

  35. Anonymous · March 6, 2009 Reply

    Nice website

    Hi Kalyan, Congrats on the new website first. Its good.
    I was wondering if you were not updating your website due to your work which might be keeping you busy, but now its good.
    Well The earlier snap of your home page, which showed you working on your laptop in the middle of nowhere, suited you a lot cos it showed a bit about your IT side as well as about your naturalist side…
    Well have a great time and keep the website updated…
    Vijay

  36. Anonymous · March 6, 2009 Reply

    The blog looks neat..but I think you have to do something with the font …
    Having a hard time reading it..
    -Subbu

  37. Anonymous · March 6, 2009 Reply

    Ooops…I am not sure why I saw it differently a while ago.. now the theme looks awesome..
    -Subbu

  38. Anonymous · March 17, 2009 Reply

    Ok, the new site is awesome!! Great job and makes it easier to navigate. Did all this yourself?

    http://www.naveenroy.com

  39. admin · March 17, 2009 Reply

    yeah.. had fun coding after a long time too.

  40. Anonymous · March 17, 2009 Reply

    looks great !

    the new site looks great !! awesome pics from the north east .. would love to see more of you camera trap images as well 🙂
    one question if you dont mind. was the tiger (camera trap) in “a hunters tale” from namdhapa ?

    Anand Narayanan

  41. admin · March 17, 2009 Reply

    Re: looks great !

    The tiger photograph was from eravikulam. I do not know if there are any tigers left in Namdapha anymore actually. Infact there were quite a few pics that were not from namdapha (great hornbills, canopy shots, sambar-wild dog sequence etc). Its not meant to mis-guide people, but it about working with the available raw material 🙂

  42. Anonymous · March 19, 2009 Reply

    Kalyan,

    good job on the website, great pics and looks awesome.

    Sridevi

  43. Anonymous · March 25, 2009 Reply

    Kalyan, you shoot a lot in Aperture priority a lot. Is there specific reason for that? Thanks,
    Raju (kakarlapudi@gmail.com)

  44. admin · March 26, 2009 Reply

    What else would one shoot in at ? 🙂

    For my type of photography, Aperture Priority suits the best. I fine tune the exposure by doing exposure compensation and try to shoot at the highest aperture possible

  45. Anonymous · March 27, 2009 Reply

    Hey Kalyan…

    Superb work as always…

    Excellent photographs..Keep them coming ..

    Goodluck,

    Misha.

  46. Anonymous · March 27, 2009 Reply

    Yeah! It does makes sense and use all that the lens could provide and I did notice the e comp. Are you still shooting with D200 or upgraded to D700 or D3?

  47. Anonymous · March 28, 2009 Reply

    Looks look…

    Hey Kalyan,

    Site looks nice…

    are you planning to keep the older one too (http://kalyanvarma.net/photography/)


    Prabhu

  48. Anonymous · March 28, 2009 Reply

    Looks great…

    Hey Kalyan,

    Site looks nice…

    are you planning to keep the older one too (http://kalyanvarma.net/photography/)


    Prabhu

  49. Anonymous · April 11, 2009 Reply

    New Site

    It seems to be an extremely well-designed site and has some superb pictures. I just wondered if you have an RSS feed or email subscription option to your journal.

    Apana

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