Started before Christmas, mothballed until last week, finally completed. jayphoto.co.uk, my attempt at a “professional” web front for my photography, is finished.

The site showcases all of the photos available as prints from my deviantART page, while hopefully avoiding some of the slightly less professional elements of the dA site and helping the visitor get through the selection checkout process with the least difficulty. Hopefully it will help me get some exposure and sell some art; my main motivation to get it done was the looming on the horizon of a couple of higher-profile photo jobs that I’ll be tackling in the coming weeks – details will be forthcoming.

Techie note: The Flash used on the main landing page is a heavily modifed version of the “Gallery Tween” sample application included with Flash 8. It reads in a randomly ordered list of image filenames from XML (generated by PHP from the site’s image database) and then displays them on the Stage, using a one-frame loop with ActionScript to shift them from side to side. If people are interested I’m happy to publish the code.

For those of you at Warwick, next week sees the arrival of the Warwick Student Arts Festival, which includes an exhibition put on by PhotoSoc. This will appear in Xanana’s Lounge (opposite Xanana’s) at the beginning of the week, and the Cooler on Thursday and will, with any luck, include some of my work.

While I was home this weekend I made a trip to my local camera shop, and came away with a new lens – the EF 55-200mm USM – and very shiny it is too :-D. My 350D’s kit lens tops out at 55mm, so this was the ideal long lens to complement it. I’ll be posting some shots from the weekend at some point soon.

Earlier in the week I finally got up to date with my Print submissions on deviantART – I’ve now submitted Prints for all the majority of photos I posted since July, when I got my new camera.

Prints are available from 6×4 upwards, at exceptionally good prices. Get ‘em while they’re hot!