It’s hard to believe it was two years ago since we launched PhotoArk out onto the World Wide Web. At the time, we never envisaged the site evolving as much as it has, especially in such a short time. The images in our libraries have almost doubled, the Blogs & Reviews section has over 70 articles, our Exhibitions contain over a whopping 500 images and we have no intention of stopping there. So, with this in mind we would like to take this opportunity to reflect on what we have achieved and what we hope to achieve in the coming years.
As you can probably guess, one of our main focuses is updating content in the image libraries. We are constantly working through our ever-growing collection of images and closely inspecting them to see if they are ‘PhotoArk worthy’. By April this year we had collected 110 images, enough to update all of our image libraries with either 5 or 10 images.
But having nice images is not enough; there is a lot of competition out there and to stand out you need a good looking, easy to use and easy to access website - something we have worked extremely hard on since inception, that’s why in April 2014 we announced PhotoArk V3.0. This was our first major site overhaul where we updated our template to provide a vastly improved mobile theme, and to provide a fully responsive site giving far better compatibility across a broad range of devices. On top of this we added a new Toolbar feature visible in the Blog & Review Hub and on the Image Libraries. An updated payment system with a new cart feature was also implemented. Even in-between our major updates we regularly re-develop and improve various features and aspects of the site. As new technologies and frameworks get released we often look at how we can make existing features, for example the Library Filter, easier to use. This we develop in an offline replica PhotoArk site that gives us an ideal sandbox environment in which to fully test.
While we are not developing and tweaking the site we are on the lookout for new and original content, which last year came in the form of some old postage stamp albums tucked away in the loft. After a bit of experimenting in our studio using our Pentax K-5 with 100mm Macro lens we realised that this endeavour could give birth to a whole new library. Sure enough, on the 20th of August 2013 we unveiled our Postage Stamps library including Architecture, Creatures, Shipping and Space Exploration. Prior to this, in March, we released a new Special’s Library containing images that lend themselves well to effects like, Bleach Bypass, Cross Process, Orton Technique and Sepia.
So, that’s the past…now let’s look to the future. Of course we will continue with our monthly blog and free image of the month, along with regular updates to our Libraries, new Exhibitions, and new reviews. But PhotoArk is still very young and there are a lot of avenues we still want to explore. In fact, we have already started work on an online shop where canvas prints, calendars and other merchandise can be purchased. We also hope to make all downloads like the image of the month archive available from this one location, plus some extra goodies!
Over the course of the next year we also hope to bring you more categories for the postage stamp library. As you can imagine, sorting through thousands of stamps and finding the most photogenic ones takes quite a while, a task suited to long winter evenings. And we also have plans to explore a completely new type of photography… something we have never dabbled with before…Aerial Photography.
We are also sure that the next year will see new equipment purchases which means that we will be able to give our honest unbiased opinion via our review and blog section.
Thanks for your support so far and here’s to an interesting third year!