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.
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.
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
Looks good.
New photos are awesome too
Love the maps feature. Finally we get to see some latest photographs
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
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!
Looks fantastic!
Your name on the top right seems a little squished. Maybe the column/image needs a width and a height.
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
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
Re: Search by location and animal is missing
It is there under Photographs – Tag Cloud.
That’s the first time I’ve seen that date.
The epoch began early for us in India!
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!
Change is tough. But after endless research, this new one proved better.
Hi Mahesh,
There is no sharpening that is being applied to the images. I will fig that out and then update the images.
I have some 200+ images shortlisted from 2008. All of them will come soon.
Thanks for pointing it out Srini. Forgot the one liner basic check
.
I wonder why its pushing the date back by a day. You think its got to do with the time zones ?
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.
As in you suggest a while background for the site or the journal ?
Yes epoch uses UTC as reference.
Your box probably probbaly has a negative offset.
This looks really cool….:) For the visitors it will be treat
-Dharani
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.
That would be the best, I would think. Your leapord pic don’t look as vibrant with the gray background as with the white.
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)
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
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
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
Re: Photo Display Software
Wrote the code on my own. Though I am using lightroom for all the keywording/captioning etc.
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
Re: Looks good
Will put the copyright signs eventually though. Yes a CC licensing post is coming up soon
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.
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.
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.
Used a small php lib which reads RSS feed and spits it out the way out want it.
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
The blog looks neat..but I think you have to do something with the font …
Having a hard time reading it..
-Subbu
Ooops…I am not sure why I saw it differently a while ago.. now the theme looks awesome..
-Subbu
Good stuff.
Ok, the new site is awesome!! Great job and makes it easier to navigate. Did all this yourself?
http://www.naveenroy.com
yeah.. had fun coding after a long time too.
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
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
Kalyan,
good job on the website, great pics and looks awesome.
Sridevi
Kalyan, you shoot a lot in Aperture priority a lot. Is there specific reason for that? Thanks,
Raju (kakarlapudi@gmail.com)
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
Hey Kalyan…
Superb work as always…
Excellent photographs..Keep them coming ..
Goodluck,
Misha.
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?
Looks look…
Hey Kalyan,
Site looks nice…
are you planning to keep the older one too (http://kalyanvarma.net/photography/)
–
Prabhu
Looks great…
Hey Kalyan,
Site looks nice…
are you planning to keep the older one too (http://kalyanvarma.net/photography/)
–
Prabhu
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