Wow – it’s been a long journey to get to where I’m at with my website.

For years, I did not have any kind of portfolio online, but mainly had my images posted in various places online (Facebook, Flickr, etc). I also had a blog where I posted sometimes regularly, sometimes not. Last year Google+ launched, and while I have enjoyed new the social network and all great interactions there, I still felt a need to have a home on the web somewhere – a place where I can control how my images and my thoughts are presented, and also a place where these thoughts and images stay and can be found on the web.

After much research into various platforms, I tried Squarespace. Love how easy it is to build a website there, and then customize it, but in the end, I could not go far enough with customization. What drove me off the cliff was that I couldn’t use the fonts I wanted to use. For some people it’s a small thing, but in my mind, that’s one of the key attributes of one’s brand.

I was then introduced to SmugMug. I knew about them for years, of course, but didn’t know that the look of SmugMug sites can be customized completely. [DISCLAIMER: somewhat unrelated to that, I ended up getting a job at SmugMug]. I decided to try to build my new site on that platform and with the help from the great customizers at FastLine Media, who took my vision for the website, and built just what I wanted. I’ve asked all kinds of things to get revised as my vision kept changing, and they came through with every single one of them. SmugMug doesn’t currently have native blog integration, but FastLine helped me build a blog right into the platform.

Now everything is one place – my blog and my portfolio.

In the coming days I’ll write more about the thought process for my site, and how it all works when one wants to build it on SmugMug platform. Now that everything is ready, I will also blog more. I used to blog primarily about photography and sometimes about the associated technology. I want to expand that, and include other topics I care about, such as nature, or nutrition (I recently adopted plant-base diet and never felt better), or anything else I feel like sharing about.

If you want to stay in touch, please subscribe to my new RSS feed.

A quick tip to pass to those of you who post images on Google+ (and thanks to Joe Azure for pointing me to this) – there is a way to see number of views on images in Google+ as well. It’s just not as straightforward as it is on places like Flickr and 500px. Here’s how.

1. Login to https://picasaweb.google.com/

2. Go to a particular album that stores a picture you want to check the views for

3. Click on the picture

4. At the bottom left side of the picture, it shows how many times it was viewed (in my case above, that image was viewed 11,624 times).

That’s it!

The only thing to remember – Google doesn’t update the results live. They seem to be a day or two behind, which is probably similar to how they operate their Google Analytics pages.

Now to be honest with you, I don’t quite understand how accurate those numbers are. I have a few pictures that were veiwed over 300,000 times – which is possible because they went viral. I then have images that were viewed 30,000 times, and they did not go viral – so seems little high to me. Finally, an average image of mine that I post to Google+ (I’m in 30,000+ circles) is viewed 2,000 – 5,000, which seems reasonable to me, based on my experience with other photo sharing sites.

But at any rate – good to know we have this function.

Unfortunately, it looks like I’ve lost my RSS feed from the blog. Still trying to see if I can get it back, but not hopeful. Please resubscribe if you still use RSS readers. 

I am also starting a newsletter. It will be coming out once a month and will feature my thoughts on fine art photography, news about my new projects, and a print giveaway. You can sign up here – http://www.ivanmakarov.com/newsletter/

I’m still working on filling galleries with images. But I thought I’d give you a heads up anyway.  

A bit of a background. Few years ago like most of you I was very active on Flickr. The community was great there and we got together several times and published our own magazine, and a few books focused on photography. Below is a sample of that effort. I had my photos in there, so did+Thomas Hawk , +Ingo Meckmann , +Jerry Lorengo , +Jeremy Brooks and many others. We also wrote articles, interviews, shared photo essays and so forth.

We never did it for profit. The main goal was to see each other’s work in print, which is a whole different experience than seeing it on a monitor. As a result, I still have those books and memories. Loved the result of those efforts.

Last week we decided to do this again. The majority of photography community seemed to moved to Google+. It’s hard to name an active photographer today who doesn’t have a presence there.

Except this time, we decided to do this for charity and give back. We’ll publish two versions of the book – a hard copy version through Blurb, and an electronic ebook for those who don’t feel they need a hard copy. All proceeds from the sales will be donated to charity.

The process of putting the book together is well under way, and we have 217 photographers who signed up for the project, some are very well known today, such as Lotus Caroll, Thomas Hawk, Joel Tjintjelaar, Jim Patterson, Patrick Smith, Brian Day and others who are less known. We hope the project will be completed by the end of January.

If you want to join in, it’s not too late. Leave a comment on the post here, as participation is open to photographers of all levels. We also set up Google+ page to help you follow the progress and participate if you have the time.

My apologies if you’re a regular visitor to this blog.

I’ve been redoing the blog and how it’s structured, including design and posts. Some of the content is going to disappear as well. The easiest way I know of how to work on the changes is in the live mode. So bear with me. I promise, soon all should be back to normal – even if with a new look.