Yes it's finally here...my very own photography-related website that is. It's all coming together, and today Sunday 9th September 2012, ping! It came alive. It's by no means complete, in fact, a lot of work outstanding to be done, but I felt an incredible sense of accomplishment waking up this morning, picking up my iPhone and navigating to www.qlitephotography.com and saw the home page come up!

I had stayed up till almost 4am in the morning changing CNAME, A-Records, DNS settings and the like, on the control panel page of my domain name provider; and setting up new contact email addresses with @qlitephotography.com, as opposed to the generic Yahoo/Gmail stuff, which I think portrays a more "professional" front (and frankly, I think, cool too!). I simply needed to re-direct anyone seeking to go to my website to seamlessly go to my new home instead. Finally went to bed after being informed the update had been successful but it might take up to 48 hours for the changes to propagate across the Internet. I certainly wasn't going to keep refreshing my web page sitting in front of the screen for the next couple of days!

I've had my domain name registered for at least 3 years but it had been parked without any contents written to it - One of those things you keep mulling over and putting off when you have yet another stab at putting up something and it doesn't come out quite the way you want it to. Much credit to Zenfolio (the powerhouse driving this and other websites for a great number of professional and enthusiast photographers). I took a test drive and could not believe how so much easier they've made the process of setting up your web site and how much it fits into my requirements. In fact as I publish this, I am only into the second of my 14-day trial period but I have absolutely no doubt that my relationship with them is going to remain for a long time to come. It's not like I haven't stored photos online before to share with friends, print and try to sell - I have commercial grade accounts with Flickr, Photobox, Instaproof, etc but none of them comes close at all to delivering the features that I require and that offer the ease of managing them as I've seen with Zenfolio.

My website is still very much a work-in-progress - so much so that I know I won't yet be in a position to publicise it in any form for at least another couple of weeks. No, there are no photos uploaded yet; no About Me info, in fact, to be honest, it is not worth taking a look at yet (as of 09 Sep 12, that is!), but if anyone else is reading this now, I'm sure there will be loads to go through. I'd always appreciate using the Comments page to provide feedback and suggestions! I'm just so pleased that I have a known starting point from which I can continue to improve. 

By the way, photography is only a passionate hobby for me (passionate hobby??! - obsession more like!) however I do also need to be committed to my day job which unfortunately goes far beyond being just a Mon-Fri 9-5 job, affording me far less time than I would like to devote to my passion. I am not one of those lucky few who make gazillions of money from their main jobs that they consider more or less hobbies, but mine does pay the bills, puts a roof over our heads, and funds all that photography gear - that photography alone (at least at my humble level) is not going to be able to fulfil. 

It's "Talk Photography Day 2012" today. Talk Photography is an online photography discussion forum of which I am a member. I am still regarded as a Newbie though. Members have been enjoined to get their cameras out today and take just one photo on any subject to upload and share on the forum. A slideshow of the best 200 or so is then put together. There were some great entries from last year, and I'll be super-chuffed if my submission gets featured. On that note, I'll see if I can now coax one of my daughters to be my assistant while I take a long walk along our local riverside looking for an appropriate subject to take....