A simple photo viewer

[-ST-]

My Casual Photo Viewer

If you have a moment, please take a look at my casual photo viewer. The photos are just samples for testing. Here is the website. You can click any thumbnail and that will open in the full-screen viewer. That's where things get interesting.

The intent is just to put a few photos from the beach in there every day. It's unlikely I'd have more than 30 images in there at any time. I'd just add a few and purge the oldest. Simple. I'll change the name to something more appropriate if I decide to keep it. Then, I'll get off Instagram.

If you have any thoughts (including criticism) I’d be grateful to hear them.
Here is the website.

Thanks for looking!
ST

The rest of this post is back-story and not necessary unless you’re interested.

Why do this instead of using social media or a full-blown website?

I walk the Crescent Beach area every morning, and people can't help notice the big white 200-600 and 70-200. People ask me, "Where can I see your photos?". I set up an Instagram account, so I could have something to say. I had no interest in social media, but the early morning people at the beach are a community. I inadvertently became one of them. I thought an Instagram account would let me share some images easily. @CrescentBeachPhotos.

Over time, people would talk to me about my photos they had seen in my feed. They rarely comment online, but they do, in person. That's pretty gratifying.

But I've come to loathe the whole social media experience. It's too easy to start posting for the algorithm instead of the people. And it’s toxic for me to spend any time on Instagram, and if I post there I feel a responsibility to go online to respond to comments.

I don't need a full-featured e-commerce website. I had one of those site-in-a-box solutions for another project. That one is wound down now, and I could have converted it. But it's more than I need to share a few photos with nodding acquaintances.

With help from an AI, I spun up a tiny website last night. I already had the technology stack in place.

There's no posting/upload process. I just put some images into a folder, and they are immediately accessible.

The one-page site took about an hour to configure. The AI wrote the code for the page in moments. I went through a few iterations to get the behavior (tap/swipe) and include EXIF data. But the longest part was waiting for the DNS propagation. (No work, just waiting for the web to recognize that you're there). I’ve since spent a couple of hours fine-tuning things like:

• The days are in reverse chronological order (newest first), but within the days, the images are presented oldest to newest (the order in which I shot them). That’s important when I deliberately shot a sequence.
• Scrub bar navigation
• Disappearing user interface controls (2-sec auto-fade if no activity)
• Details (EXIF data) persist if you have chosen to click the Details button (no auto-fade)
• In full screen mode, swipe navigation left-right is back and forward, down returns to thumbnails view.

If this works well enough, I can finally get back to working 2:3 landscape instead of 4:5 portrait (for Instagram).


If you'd like to take a look, here is the website.

Thanks for your interest,

ST

 

[etiennescamera]

I have become disillusioned with Instagram and now post much less frequently than I used to.

I like your concept and will follow with interest to see how you develop it. This is something I might want to try as well, but will have to up my technology/IT game.

A couple of suggestions if I may:
1. I know the dates are in the EXIF data but perhaps also have the dates visible as headers
2. I understand the purpose of your site and that locals and people you talk to probably don't need it, but still, a short description with each photo or each day's series, if possible to do without too much difficulty, would be quite interesting.

 

[-ST-]

Thanks for looking, Etienne

I really appreciate your comments.

I have become disillusioned with Instagram and now post much less frequently than I used to.

I like your concept and will follow with interest to see how you develop it. This is something I might want to try as well, but will have to up my technology/IT game.

A couple of suggestions if I may:
1. I know the dates are in the EXIF data but perhaps also have the dates visible as headers

Dates
The date is always visible in both the thumbnail grid and fullscreen views.

When swiping left and right, when you move to a new date, there's a little banner to tell you that you're on a new day.

2. I understand the purpose of your site and that locals and people you talk to probably don't need it, but still, a short description with each photo or each day's series, if possible to do without too much difficulty, would be quite interesting

Short Description = Story Button
Check out the "Story" button in the full screen view.
The story pops up in a box at the top of the screen, but on devices with a mouse, you can drag it around.

I'm using the IPTC data to add a short description to the photos. I went back a few days to populate some of the test images.
I wasn't using those fields before, but they are easy to access in Capture One.

Frictionless Publishing
I now have an export routine in Capture One that saves images directly to the folder where they are immediately picked up by the viewer.

It's just a casual viewer, not a full-blown publishing system. It had to be frictionless publishing. Mission accomplished.

It's not perfect, and there are a few little anomalies I'll have to fix.

Thanks again for looking.