smo-ir

about this site

This is the private photoblog of Stephan Modry. I am a self-tought photog that likes to shoot portraits and abandoned / decayed architecture. I live in Nuernberg, Germany.

Boring history: I bought my first decent SLR (Nikon F301) waaaaay back in 1990 (thanks Oliver). It was lots of fun back in the days. After some system upgrades I discovered night and industrial photography. Industriepark Duisburg Nord, anybody? Those were great times but I discovered that the lack of possible presentation really dampened my enthusiasm. Thus, there was a longer period of time where I was only occasionally taking photos. But then the first digital cameras emerged. When they became affordable, I bought a Canon S10 digital compact camera and was thrilled. You can take tons of photos and watch them immediately after without any additional cost. Soon after taking lots of pictures with the S10 (which I still have btw.) I wanted more. A little bit more control. But since the DSLRs were just still to damn expensive, I bought a Canon G5. Very neat machine. Took some nice photos with it but the exposure delay drove me nuts in the end. So I got myself a Canon 20D as a real bargain just when the 30D was coming out. This baby rocked. And still does. I have no ambitions to replace it soon. It’s fast, reliable, light weight and takes awesome pictures. You gotta love it. I drag ‘her’ around since 2006 and she never let me down. All posted photos on splitseconds.de are shot with the 20D. All posted photos prior to August ’09 on splitseconds.de are shot with the 20D. In early August ’09 I got myself a M-Leica (and already updated it in November ’09) and thus most newer published photos are shot with this amazing tool.

Colophon: After evaluating several photoblog software, CMSes and hosting services I finally decided to realize my photoblog with good ol’ textpattern that always served me well since 2004. Concerning splitseconds’s design I was massively inspired by the blog of a personal photography hero of mine: David Nightingale’s chromasia. Dave’s site inspired and pretty much defined for me how a photoblog has to look and feel like. Oh, and before anyone gets any ideas: I wrote all the html and css of splitseconds.de myself. From scratch. On a Mac. :)

Textpattern plugins used on splitseconds (for those who’re interested):

  • an7_comments
  • fpx_image_import
  • gbp_admin_library
  • gbp_permanent_links
  • rss_admin_show_adv_opts
  • smd_lib
  • smd_slimbox
  • tru_tags
  • upm_image
  • wet_link
  • zem_nav

javascript:

Navigation: The primary navigation should be straight forward and is like in most photoblogs. The page initially shows the latest photo posted. Using the ‘on-photo’ navigation, the left-arrow takes you to the time-wise previously posted photo and the right arrow to the later posted photo respectively. Every photo is tagged with one or more keywords. You can read about a photo through following the “info/comments” link in the site header. This will trigger a popup (yes, I know, but it’s still the best solution for this matter) which contains the following information:

  • title of posted photo
  • date of post
  • info/story about the photo
  • exposure data
  • selected tags
  • album (if any)

Tags: Every photo is tagged with a few tags. Tags are like multiple categories an image belongs to and as such describe its ‘characteristics’. Clicking on a tag name brings you to a list of photo-posts (incl. info and thumbnail view) of all photos that have been tagged with this particular tag.

Albums: Certain photos belong to an album. All these photos do not share a common tag (characteristic) but rather are connected content-wise. I decided to include the concept of albums because I think it’s very convenient to be able to see all pictures taken at a particular location regardless of their characteristics.

Oh well. So much for the boring (technical) details of splitseconds.de. I hope you enjoy your stay and the photos. I’m looking forward to reading your comments. Please leave comments. I’d really appreciate feedback.

Thanks for reading (if you really made it this far) and have a nice day.