Welcome to the Maru Landscapes Blog. Here, I will share with you my latest images, techniques, and thoughts on landscape photography. From the best places to go, to the best equipment and techniques to use, you will find it here. I hope you enjoy the blog and come to visit often.
Jeremy Jackson
A New Website
By:
Jeremy Jackson
| Now 14, 2013
Location:
Home
| Fraser Valley
Story: For some time I have been thinking about redoing my website. When Google made a change to their policy that caused a dead link on every single page of my website, the final decision was made. It was either fix 200 dead links or start again.
One thing I am proud of is that I have created all my websites myself. About 5 years ago now I sat down one morning with my computer and just began. I had no experience with programming, web hosting, domain registration...nothing. I just had some confidence and a bit of time.
This is now my third website. It is written in HTML, PHP and there is a little bit of Java-script and JQuery as well. I learned all of these languages myself with some trial and error, help from Online developers forums and plain old determination. In fact, I have never taken a single course in web development or programming!
The new website has a much cleaner overall look, is much easier to navigate and includes some Java-script routines that allow for much fewer pages and more efficient code. The site took about 60 hours of coding and perhaps another 30 hours of Photoshop to create the 150 images that are needed for the website. Most of the 60 hours were spent wondering why something that should have worked did not. I think that's the nature of programming, even for people that know what they are doing.
Mixed Feelings: In many ways, the Internet is a wonderful thing. It allows incredible access to information and a way to interact quickly and seemlessly with people around the world.
But the Internet has had some pretty dramatic negative effects as well. One of them, I believe, is a significant devaluation of photography. I once read a fascinating book called "The Great Art Hoax" by Jon Huer. In the book, the author claims that, by it's very nature, collectible art must be something that is rare, expensive and hard to access. These three things, it is suggested, are necessary in order for art work to be considered valuable. If Huer is correct, the very act of making photography freely available on the Internet strips it of its value.
So it is with this reservation that I make freely available my photography for anyone to see, reproduce, email to friends, and so on. My hope is that viewers of these images recognize that the ease of access and availability of these images is no indication of how difficult they have been to make. There is here a lifetime of hard work, creation, learning, effort, risk and expense.
So please enjoy the website and these images. And if you can, spend a little time, reflect on the natural world these images document and ask a friend to support a local artist.
Some Related Links...
Jon Huer
Internet & Culture
Internet & Devaluation
All images copyright of Maru Landscapes - 2010. Landscape Photography of the Pacific Northwest.