What’s Changed, and What’s Coming Next

A lot has changed here, and some of it is worth explaining properly rather than announcing.

The site runs on a new server with a gallery system built from scratch. The important part is invisible: the galleries render on the server instead of being drawn by JavaScript, which means search engines can actually read them. The old way looked fine to visitors and was very nearly invisible to Google. If you are browsing on a phone, the new layout was rebuilt for you first.

Images now come in tiers. Everything in the public galleries is free to browse. Members get larger files, and the premium tier carries the full masters — 5K to 8K, straight from the originals rather than upscaled from a web copy. Prints are coming through a fulfillment partner, made from those same originals.

Some of what I talked about last year is not happening, and I would rather say so than let it sit there. The chat rooms, live messaging, meetings and reaction system are not the direction any more. Building a social network that nobody is on yet is not a good use of the only pair of hands here, and it is not what artists have told me they are short of.

What is coming instead: every artist gets their own page, their own blog and their own gallery, on a real address. A way for visitors to like images and sort a gallery by what people actually look at. And access to the same generation and upscaling tools I use, through the site.

If you make this kind of work and want to talk about being one of the first artists here, use the contact page. I read everything that comes in.