Professional / commercial photography has been very quiet during the last two years. Recession is largely to blame because the last thing architects and developers want to spend money on are luxuries like photography – especially since many architects are very good photographers themselves. It is therefore fantastic news, and something of a relief, that the market showed signs of life at the end of last year. My only regret is that it took me away from the Comet.

In the middle of it all, I had a complaint from a prospective client that my portfolio could not be viewed on an iPad. This shocking news took me back. I should have realised, of course, since the slide show is in Flash, so I kicked myself hard in the foot and looked for a fix.

As a matter of urgency, the first two weeks of January have been spent finding a suitable way to present photographic slide shows that works well on most things. I investigated HTML5 and writing my own software, but quickly realised it would take a long time to learn – at least it would to get the best out of it.

Previously, I had used SimpleViewer: an excellent, slick little Flash viewer that I’d recommend it to anyone looking for something to embed in their own web-page. They have also reacted to the iPhone by providing an automatic, dual output: Flash for desktops and HTML5 for iOS, but it needs refinement.

I tried various other commercial solutions before settling on SlideShowPro. This had three advantages for me:

1. Photographs are managed by a MySQL/PHP application which makes uploading and organising new material so much easier;
2. The slide show is highly adaptable, so I could make it my own and get away from the standard template;
3. The iPhone/iPad version is well thought out and arranged automatically from the MySQL/PHP app. Crucially, moving from one picture to the next is a familiar iOS “swipe”, so it feels like a proper iPhone thing.

You are more than welcome to see the results, and therefore what else I get up to, here:

montagu-pollock.co.uk

I am back on the Comet again this week. More news (of the kind you’ve been waiting for, not feeble excuses) will follow ...

Guy.

Tags: Photography