A New Beginning

Thank you so much for your patience with my absence from all forms of communication over the last few months: YouTube, my newsletter and social media. Despite appearances, I’ve been incredibly busy working on things behind the scenes – predominantly giving my website a complete overhaul.

It was in a bit of a haphazard way that I came to the decision to dedicate the time to rebuilding my website from scratch, but all the various areas in my creative journey that weren’t where I wanted them to be could all be solved by a new website build, so about 3 months ago I took the leap, though I believed it wouldn’t take me nearly as long as it has…silly in retrospect given the scope of what I wanted to achieve.

Connection

Firstly was this newsletter. I felt inspired to create it at the start of the year during the time when my computer had died and I was trying to get a replacement. I wanted to be able to share my thoughts in writing, as well as giving time to other areas I love, such as poetry, that had taken a back-seat over the last few years whilst I focussed on my photography and video creation.

Something I noticed almost immediately though, was that I missed hearing from people like I did in the comments section of my videos. I’d also had people remark that they missed being able to read others comments too. It seemed obvious I needed to integrate the newsletter with an online blog that allowed commenting – something my previous website had no capability of, and being something I’d coded completely by hand would have taken a massive effort to integrate.

So what you’ll find from now on is that all the content of my newsletters can also be found on my website. If you click on the title at the top of each newsletter it will take you to the page on my site, which for some people may be easier to read (email clients are incredibly inconsistent in how they display content, and while I’ve tried to get my emails to look as much like my website I can, it’s proven impossible for all the formatting to be replicated).

You’ll also find at the end of all my newsletters now there will be a link inviting you to leave a comment that will also take you to the content on my website. Below the content you’ll find the section where you can comment. I’m really looking forward to hearing from you there!

In order to prevent spam comments, please note that the first time you comment I will need to approve it before it will appear on the site, but comments after the first one will appear straight away.

Integration

Another big area where my previous website was lacking was that my online store wasn’t integrated with it, but was instead made through another online provider, and was something I found incredibly limiting and clunky to use. It made it difficult to offer prints of all my photos, and it began to seem to ridiculous to me that here I was a landscape photographer but people couldn’t buy a print from me.

I also wasn’t able to sell digital products through it, which stopped me being able to offer Danny’s music as a download, and also prevented me from looking at ever making any ebooks.

All that has been solved with my new site. There are two different ways you can explore my photography: either through the “Photos” menu, where you can see them in separate galleries by area, or through the “Prints” section of the store, which shows all my photos (latest first), with the ability to filter by subject, location, or the time of day the photo was taken.

I’ve actually found it really interesting to see what photos I’ve taken at various times – particularly at midday. I think it does help to show that photos you love can be taken at any time.

Narration

The final piece of the puzzle I was wanting my new site to fulfill lies in my disenchantment with the current state of social media – namely Instagram, Facebook and X (Twitter). I can’t be the only person who is finding social media more and more hollow and an energy drain.

Instagram, given it once used to be a wonderful place to share photography and interact with other photographers, is a particular disappointment to me. A feed filled with reels, ads and suggestions, instead of the photos of the photographers I’ve chosen to follow, is of little interest to me, and the times when I’ve tried to do more thoughtful commenting on images like I used to do, I’ve had Instagram block my comments and tell me I’m spamming!

And with the introduction of AI, social media is feeling faker and faker, and in many ways seems to actually be anti-social. I’m finding myself craving more real, thoughtful content, so a big part of my intent when creating my site was for it to be more than just showing an image without any context. I wanted to be able to share the stories behind the images.

I’ve therefore also integrated all my videos into the site, with the video related to an image shown right there with the photo. Many images also have a short, written story about the photo. I haven’t had the time to do stories for every image yet, but going forward it’s something I intend to include every time I add a new photo.

Inspiration

Above and beyond everything, I’ve created my new website with the intention for it to be beautiful, uplifting and inspiring: an enjoyable place to easily explore and get lost in. The entire site, and home page in particular, is a bit different – and I believe immersive – than anything I’ve ever seen before from a creator. I’d love for you to check it out and let me know what you think!

I’ve tried to double-check everything, but please let me know if you find anything that isn’t working properly, or any typos etc. There’s a lot to the site, and with all the changes through it’s creation I may have missed little things.

My site will be the hub connecting everything I create, and the best place to keep up-to-date with what I’m doing – along with my newsletter! I will continue to send out all the new blog posts, news, poems and quotes on the site as newsletters (depending on what content you’ve chosen to receive – you can always change this with the link at the bottom of the email).

At this point I’m aiming to never send more than 2 emails a week (this is the maximum, not necessarily the normal) – the complexity of how to achieve this with the limitations of the email provider and all the different sorts of content I’m offering has proven much harder than I anticipated, but I think I understand how to get there now, but until I actually put it all into motion when I start adding content I can’t be 100% sure if it will all work as planned, so I apologise if there end up being any glitches.

Videos

I’ll be getting back into making videos very soon too. Insanely, I still have three videos from our time away last year to release. And I do want to get out taking photos locally again too…there never seems to be enough time for it all!

A little change I’ve made with my videos is to remove all the ads from the middle of them for a better watching experience – there will only be ads at the beginning and end now.

2025 Calendar

One last thing before I go: a quick mention that my 2025 calendar is now available to pre-order! All the images featured here are from the calendar. I’ll send another email with a bit more information about it in a few days, but I think I’ve bombarded you with enough for one day.