Optimum

This is about the website that I recently created for portfolio of photographs by Nitin Gera. It is my favourite website out of the ones that I’ve made till now. I wanted to create a presentation that could do justice to the outstanding photography by Nitin and I am satisfied that the website almost does that. It might sound like I am praising my own work but it isn’t so. This is a self-evaluation and an account of the thought process behind this work.

Beginning with the king i.e. content, the pictures are organized into galleries that reflect Nitin’s choice of genres. Inside each portfolio page the photographs were lined up according to the same principles as one would apply while displaying artworks in a real life gallery. The selection and sequence of images is not random. Each picture was handpicked out of Nitin’s massive collection and carefully placed in an appropriate order. These pages also carry the context of each selection through text.

The webpage was meant to be sleek looking and functionally efficient. These days the obvious choice for implementing websites seems to be either Flash or a CMS. Both are very capable and sharp swords. But all that I needed was a needle. So far I’ve only used HTML and JavaScript in this site.

The thing about Flash that makes it so useful for creating interactive websites is ActionScript. This language is like a cousin of JavaScript, both being dialects of ECMA-Script. ActionScript comes into play inside a Flash environment that works independent of the internet browser, while JavaScript allows you to use built-in browser functionality. JavaScript objects fit inside HTML and can be controlled through CSS. The advantage of using this trio is that they are native to browsers and HTML gets plus points in SEO scorecards. I wouldn’t bundle all my data inside a Flash module unless I am creating a rich internet application.

Another important decision was to not use a CMS, simply because it wasn’t needed. A CMS is used when you’ve a lot of content updated almost on a daily basis. Like I said earlier that the selection of photographs is not random, we didn’t want to program it either. You can’t just place any artwork besides another. We needed direct control over presentation of photographs, hence the hard coding.

The site will soon have CMS driven sections. There will be a photoblog that Nitin can use to interact more regularly with visitors.

I believe that to create an effective communication content, presentation, and technology have to be joined together through a common thought process. In this case I needed to create a website that rings with the photographer’s philosophy about his work – Optimum. And being optimum is not a stage but a continuous process, so this online portfolio will evolve along with the photographer.