One of the many ways artist and photographers share their art and ideas is through websites on the internet. Ever since I went out on my own I realized you need a website to run a business or share your creative work as an artist.

When I wanted to start my first website I was frustrated with how much it cost to hire a web designer so I went to the book store (yes book store) and bought a book on Dreamweaver. This software program helped people like myself build basic HTML websites. And so I did. I built a Frankenstein of a website but it delivered the content that I had in a way where people could see it around the world. Was it pretty? Maybe not, but it served its purpose and it helped me learn how to program some basic HTML.

While this website was live I got into pinhole photography and started a monthly pinhole photographer feature on my site. Each month I would feature an interesting pinhole photographer from around the world and would ask them a series of questions about their work. I also would feature a few of their pinhole photographs.

During that time I created a name for myself in the world of lensless photography and was approached by a publisher to see if I wanted to write a book on pinhole photography. I told them I wasn’t an author but I would give it a try. Soon I would write and publish Pinhole Cameras: a DIY Guide that was published by Princeton Architectural Press, in New York City. 

The site was fine for a while and then became dated, so I hired someone to build another website. That website was great until the platform it ran on was no longer supported. So once again, I had to start over again and pay another person to build a new website. Soon that website template was no longer supported and in an effort to fix it I feel I broke it beyond my abilities to make it right again. It needed to be built from the ground up. [ sigh ]. All this time and effort wasted only to have a broken website. 

In 2017 I accepted a job at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies as their full-time photographer. From then until now, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the brightest scientists in the world. I’ve photographed group shots or labs, press releases, architecture, drone photography, events, tons of headshots and editorial photos for their magazine Inside Salk. I’ve met so many wonderful people while being employed there. I love my job there. 

So why do I need a new website? I’ve never liked things that are broken or needing repair. I knew I needed help to make my old broken website right, so made it my goal and New Years resolution to find web designer and get a new site built correctly. After asking around to friends and colleagues, I finally found someone I felt I could trust and was qualified to make it happen.

My good friend and old co-worker, Dennis Garcia at Lift Design, referred me to Michael Jaramillo Design + Photography, who did a great job making suggestions and pulling everything together. A new site I could get excited about again. An outlet I could now start posting new work that I had been sitting on for over a year. I knew it would take me some time to populate it but once the site is live, I would be motivated once again to post my work online. What was broken is now fixed. This made me happy and gave me a sense of accomplishment.

The image above is a screenshot of Google images when my old website was working correctly. My goal was to create a new platform where I can share my photography work without using social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter now X, and LinkedIn, to do it. I’ll still use those platforms but not as my primary tool to share my creative voice. I hope this website does that for me. Like a hitting the reset button on your computer or phone. In this case it would be a creative-restart. Like planting a new seed in the ground. Something to nurture and care for. To create and learn from.

Hopefully the people that visit this site are inspired to do the same for themselves in some sort of way.

Please check back later as I plan to post some of my travel photos from trips to countries such as Thailand, Iceland, Belize and Japan.