Making Lightroom's photo galleries a bit more exciting

When a photographer colleague of mine approached me to help him create a new website to showcase his work, I was quite excited, because the project allowed me to exercise a little creative thinking on how he could easily create photo galleries that didn't look like the bog standard stuff you usually see these days. I like to tailor the job to the client, and make something that slots right into his or her workflow, rather than forcing poeple onto a particular tool or platform regardless of whether it's right for them. So, because he was already using Adobe Lightroom to process his images, it seemed like a good idea to base the website on the galleries that come built into Lightroom. But they are a bit boring and pretty limited in terms of customisation. And the client wanted a really individual website that visually represented what his photography was all about: edgy, modern imagery.

The final solution was for me to build a custom HTML framework that houses embedded versions of the Lightroom galleries. This means that the client gets all the visual appeal of a bespoke site, with all the ease of exporting and uploading galleries directly from Lightroom. He didn't have to learn anything new, and he gets to take advantage of a tool already built into his normal working environment. It's great to be able to work in this way, and I look forward to other projects where I can help people save time or make their workflow a little simpler. That's what gives me the greatest satisfaction in life. I don't think of this kind of project as a 'design' job: to me it's all about helping people. Check out the results here.