So, Where have I been these last few months?

David robertson I know some of you have been wondering where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to all summer and autumn as I haven’t been blogging or Tweeting much or updating my Scot-image Facebook Page either. Well, I’ve hardly picked the camera up since our trip to Tiree in June/July, just a few family and friends portrait sessions and my usual stint at the Ardoch Amateur Dramatics’ Panto.

Dry-Stone Walling

I’ve been busy though! In a previous lifetime, at least it seems that way, I used to be a dry-stone dyker and I received a couple of offers to roll up my sleeves, bend my back and place a few stones again, offers too good to refuse. So that was July and August taken care of, not my favourite months for photography anyway!

Backpacking

September was spent backpacking, walking from Cardiff to Conway following the Cambrian Way, a 275 mile walk climbing over 60,000 feet of ascent. Those of you following my Personal Challenge will know that that bumped up my total nicely!

Website

My intention this autumn was to head back to Sutherland (had a great trip there in June) but that didn’t happen. Since returning from Wales I have been chained to my PC, building a new website, editing image IPTC and uploading images to the galleries on my new website. Well, it’s not exactly new, it’s an update. I’m leaving PhotoShelter who have been hosting my photos for several years now but I felt it was time to move on and host my own images and galleries. There are a quite a few reasons for my move but I have no complaint with the services of PhotoShelter, it’s just that I wanted more control over my work.

Stockbox Photo

I am now running Stockbox Photo Gallery software on my own server. I’ve just about built the new site (just a few tweeks needed) but it’s up and running now and I’m adding images and galleries every day.

Stockbox Photo has excellent SEO options, superb support, a great lightbox facility and runs faster than my old PhotoShelter galleries. The backend admin might not be as slick but I don’t think my customers and clients are bothered about that! They will certainly appreciate the speed and lightboxes though. I’ll write more about my new image galleries and experience wiuth Stockbox Photo later on when I have finished building and populating the galleries.

And next year?

Well, there is still plenty of IPTC to edit! After the sad demise of one of my distributors, The Travel Library, and their subsequent takeover by PhotoShot I have a large number of images I want to submit. So, there will be plenty more keyboard tapping but I’ll be out with my camera for a few Christmas/Hogmanay pictures and let’s hope there is some snow!

Bye for now