max s. gerber(the latest shot)

well it’s a super tuesday of activity over here at msgphoto.com. it’s been a while since i’ve posted, and that’s not because i’ve been neglectful, or not thinking of all of you. i’ve been hard at work redesigning the site. i’m no web designer, so it was a long road. there’s been a great deal of talk lately about what a photographer’s site is supposed to look like and how it’s supposed to function. there’s a big push towards lots of flash and using photographer’s template website services such as livebooks. i have to say, really, in 99.99% of cases, i loathe flash, and don’t much care for livebooks. i also don’t care much for the idea that i couldn’t tackle this thing myself, and without feeling compelled to have little squiggly lines fly all over the screen for no reason.

so i gave it a shot. and it took some doing. eventually i had to bribe bill smith to help me figure out how to use dreamweaver more effectively, and help me fix some design problems. i learned much more about tables. i learned a little about CSS. a little more about HTML. and i spent a week of 12-15 hour days plugging away at it, usually quitting at night when i realized i had just made a mistake that would take 2 hours to fix the next day. not the least of which involved erasing this very blog by accident when i uploaded the final new site at 3am yesterday. of course, we always realize these things too late, but i really have to hand it to lunarpages, my web host. they answered my email in the middle of the night within fifteen minutes, and thank god they have the good sense to back up everything on their servers every day. it took me a $75 internet idiot tax/data recovery fee, but they had the blog back by mid-morning, like nothing ever happened, and i’ve learned a valuable lesson: wait ’til the next day to upload, after you’ve slept. at least i managed not to delete my client directories.

did i redesign my site in the most effective and efficient way manner? no, probably not. this is likely evidenced by the fact that, according to my computer, it contains one thousand two hundred twenty three individual files (damn those rollovers). still, i think this is a far cleaner site than i’ve ever had before, and hopefully it’s easier to use, and more pleasant to navigate. no more scrolling, everyone!

so yeah, go check it out.

in other, even more exciting news, the hearts book has finally been released. we’re working on getting a dedicated site up for the book, which will hopefully happen soon. this will have book excerpts, audio/visual slideshows, blog and message forum for anyone who wants to talk about CHD. in the meantime you can see excerpts from the book here, and if you’re so inclined can buy the book, either directly from the publisher, or from amazon.

it’s all very exciting, and i’m trying to keep up.

oh, and i voted. you’re welcome, california.