love or lust?

[lost eden]

Firstly to conform to the application rules;

Desired username: 'loveorlust' (without the quotes).

Email address: tenshiANTISPAMsouzouATgmail.ANTISPAM.com

love or lust? has been my personal website for some years now, & although it's function has changed over the years it has grown slowly into a place where I upload fanfiction (mostly based on CLAMP works) & more recently it has been pressed into service to host my ever-growing interest in photography.

As my interest in photography has expanded, so to does the number of shots I wish to share with others. I dislike hosting my shots on third-party photo websites such as photobucket & imageshack for many reasons, & would much rather use 'Fotos on Web' (free software for Windows & Linux, homepage = http://apps.jjude.com/ ) & host the gallery myself. As I am proceeding onto a Diploma in Photography come the new academic year (September) the amount of work that I wish to host will dramatically expand. Not only will this include photographs, but also work in other media; sketching, paintwork, even animation/film/music, owing to the wide range of art & design topics covered in my prospective course.

However to my horror today after spending many hours scanning photos (I am prominently a film photographer, although I tend to then digitize my shots for easier manipulation) that Freewebs accounts have a limit of 100 files, which renders the account virtually useless for my use. Add to that the many other negatives of Freewebs (such as no FTP access) & it is no wonder that I am now in the search for better hosting. Xepher.net immediately came to mind as I have visited sites hosted by Xepher created by friends membered to internet communities such as Megatokyo & MysticalAura.

The best example of my intentions is what exists of love or lust? on it's current Freewebs hosting at http://www.freewebs.com/loveorlust . I would like to draw particular attention to the Photos page, because that is where my real passion lies & that is what the majority of the site would centre around. The final entry (Oz Experience) are shots I took whilst in Australia with the charity 'The Joshua Foundation' who work to provide life experiences to children with terminal cancer. This album/gallery was created with 'Fotos on Web' using CSS & XML. I was mid way through uploading this album when I hit the 100 file limit, much to my annoyance. Though the first entry on the Photos page (Leamington College Portfolio) displays my true focus.

I briefly posted on Shadowness (http://www.shadowness.com/user.php?id=lost%20eden) however I would prefer more flexibility in what I can do, rather than just uploading my work to another un-personalisable conglomeration of artists. I want a place to call my own.

The majority of the site was written in Nvu (www.nvu.com) which is an open source Windows & Linux alternative to FrontPage & other similar programs, though this is not to say that I do not have more than passable knowledge of HTML, CSS & using FTP.

I hope a fruitful future awaits us all!

[griever]

I can't say I'm a fan of CLAMP in general, but I've been looking through your portfolio photos as fast as dial up will permit and I like them.  I'm have no background in art, but I think a lot of the photos look really nice.  However, It's impossible for me to read any of the text on your website, except for the links. x.x

[lost eden]

Yeah I'm gonna be changing the text colour, because unless you're using a decent CRT or really decent TFT it's just too faint. If you use a laptop TFT you can't read it at all, because they're too washed-out & simply don't have the colour reproduction.

[Xepher]

Definitely some nice photos. The college portfolio is really well done. Though all the ones from australia are really grainy looking. I can't tell if that's because you got stuck with the wrong speed film, of if it's your gallery program butchering them in the conversion to JPEG or something. It's adding huge white borders, which is a big waste, so it wouldn't surprise me if it's killing them on compression too. Might want to look into that. Not much you can do if it's the film itself, but if it's software, there's much better stuff for free even. That's just a minor technical issue though, won't affect your application.

As for the application, your idea about the photos is sound, and you say you want to focus on that. So, may I ask, why are you applying under "loveorlust" Might it not be a better idea to pick a more professional sounding name, to focus on the photography like you said you plan to, and put the CLAMP fanfiction as the small subsection?

[fesworks]

Personally I do like B&W stills... moreso of still of action caught in a split second, or the interpretation of something moving.

[lost eden]

>>Though all the ones from australia are really grainy looking.

That's because they were scanned rather quickly because all of my impatient friends with their digital cameras wanted the shots quickly. Hence they were all scanned at lower-then-normal resolution with common settings & haven't been cleaned/edited at all, with  the intention being that I would re-scan & spend time cleaning if anybody wanted a better version. They're also at substantially lower quality than the College Portfolio (less than 50K per shot instead of 300K per shot. I would usually have kept them at much higher quality). The majority of the shots taken when I was down there were what I would call 'holiday snaps' rather than properly-set-up shots to be proud of anyway. I don't think that that album/gallery really conveys my interests/focuses/talents (I hope). As I said before, the Leamington College Portfolio better displays me.

>>So, may I ask, why are you applying under "loveorlust"

You're right, I applied under the same name mainly because it's what I've been using for quite a while & to tell you the truth I was a bit desperate after all of today's hard work got shot down by FreeWebs. But you're right, now that I am focusing on my photography I should really create a new & better suited site under a new & better suited name. I'll have a sleep on a new name because I'm rather stumped on a new one at the moment (it's been a long day!) but I'm open to any suggestions. Obviously something containing something to do with photography, maybe incorporating my avatar (lost eden) like edenphotography or something... Anyway I'll see what comes up by tomorrow (UK citizen by the way, it's night over here!).

>>Personally I do like B&W stills...

As a matter of fact there isn't a single Black & White shot on the site - they're all Duotones, Tritones or Quadtones (mostly gray-blacks, so the difference is small, but there).

[Xepher]

No problem, take your time. I just felt like I was judging a photography site, but would be adding a fanfic site. It was a bit disjoint. Eden photography sounds a lot more appropriate. :-)

[fesworks]

>>Personally I do like B&W stills...

As a matter of fact there isn't a single Black & White shot on the site - they're all Duotones, Tritones or Quadtones (mostly gray-blacks, so the difference is small, but there).

Well, yea, but i think you know what I mean. Too much color can certainly be distracting. But yea

[lost eden]

Well I've done some googling of names I like the sound of, & millions of people have sites made up from different combinations of the words 'eden' & 'photography' or 'photographic', so to be a little bit different... how's about 'imagesofeden' ? Because then it doesn't sound completely strictly about photography, because as I said, my course will involve a fair bit of work on other medias which I may also want to display. So what d'ya think?

[fesworks]

how about "imageden" because it could be Image Den or Image Eden.... or "imagesofeden" sounds good too

[lost eden]

Hmm I'm kinda liking imagesofeden still, imageden looks too much as though it should be one word... to me at least...

[fesworks]

Well, I didn;t think you were going to seriously consider my suggestion, but the squished lower-case would just be for the URL purposes... on the actually site with your heading and such you could make it look like ImagEden .... which I guess also makes me thinking of "Imaging Eden" now that I look at it...

[lost eden]

Meh, thanks for the idea, but imagesofeden is kinda growing on me... I also have this vision of having to explain to people how to spell ImagEden when i tell them about my site...

Yeah I think 'imagesofeden' will be it.

[Xepher]

Righto... Bump this thread if I haven't gotten back to you by this weekend.

[fesworks]

Meh, thanks for the idea, but imagesofeden is kinda growing on me... I also have this vision of having to explain to people how to spell ImagEden when i tell them about my site...

Yeah I think 'imagesofeden' will be it.

haha yea, like I said, my post was more of a jest to playing with names and mixing them I do like how "Images of Eden" makes me imagine or rather think of what images would come to mind about Eden, so yea, i do like the name too