It is strange how ideas form into actions – sometimes it can be just a passing comment or suggestion that spawns something tangible and interesting. PhotoArk began like this and its conception can be traced to a winter’s evening early in 2012, during a session at our local gym. I have been running my gallery site Visionage.co.uk for more than a decade and it was in desperate need of an overhaul to freshen the appearance and address a few technical niggles arising from technologies steady march onward. My Son also ran a couple of development websites (Digicolabs.co.uk and thenervenet.co.uk), but up until now we had never collaborated in a joint venture.

We have both been interested in photography for many years and wanted to create something that would give our efforts a global identity, but not driven by social network sites. We required something that would challenge our technical skills in photography and also in our web development skills. More than this, we wanted something to unite our interests in photography. And so it was, on a particularly chilly wet evening that the embryonic yet-to-be-named PhotoArk came into existence.

Three names were mooted; imageplanet, imageark and photoark. Of these, we trimmed it to imageplanet and photoark and registered both domains. One of my largest ‘wishes’ for the site was that it looks fresh, clean and youthful. My problem when writing sites is that they tend to be a bit utilitarian and a bit corporate in their looks. I wanted a complete departure from this so handed the reins to Ethan who would approach the project from a completely different perspective. And being young he was far savvier than I with the integration and update of our presence on social networking sites, which he was keen to exploit.

Next came the choice of Web Development tools we would use to write the site. As we had both used Joomla! in the past, we looked here first for a suitable template. And it was not long before Ethan had compiled a shortlist of interesting templates, and soon after settled on the style you see now. We had further conversations regarding the site name and canvassed other family members for their opinion. Favour firmly fell with PhotoArk.

So now we had a name and a style, but had yet to decide on content.  Naturally, the best of our images would be included – after all this is a photography website! I was keen to preserve some of the features from Visionage, notably the travel galleries (renamed to ‘exhibitions’ in PhotoArk), some of the images from other galleries, and a little content from the reviews section. All were extensively re-written and added to for the initial release of PhotoArk. What Visionage never possessed that The Nerve Net did was a blog – so this idea was also included.

Throughout most of our talks, we wanted to include a simple payment and download mechanism, as our previous sites had relied on email correspondence being sent when a purchase was required. This moved the transaction away from the site and provided no immediacy for the customer. We were keen not to repeat this, and so began our biggest PhotoArk learning curve - the search was on for a payment and download mechanism. Neither of us had worked on one before and we spent many months evaluating several systems before opting for QuickSell File Seller from Motov.net.

We also felt it important to include an option for users to log in. We decided not to link it to payments and downloads as we wanted to keep this process as simple as possible. Personally, I hate having to create accounts, as it just wastes time and bombards my inbox with spam. At the moment registering with us gives access to the Exhibitions section, an Image of the Month archive and the ability to view orders. But non-the less, we are still open to suggestions - feel free to make them known to us using the Contact Us link. What we wholeheartedly promise not to do is to spam any person who registers with us.

PhotoArk is still very much in its infancy, but we are busy updating it on a regular basis. Notifications of all additions are pushed out through Google+, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, so check back with us from time to time and see how the site grows.