Background
If you recall, I made a post New Changes Coming In 2024! way back at the beginning of the year last year. Now that we’re in April of 2025 – I want to take some time to reflect on things I’ve learned along the way – as well as what changes I have implemented (vs those which fell to the wayside). Additionally – I want to showcase the changes that I did make in 2024, there were quite a few!
Changes From 2024
Let’s recall that going into 2024 – the three changes I wanted to make were:
- Say goodbye to SmugMug ✅
- Use Flickr again ✅
- Be more purposeful with the work I share ✅
I succeeded in all three regards!
Early in the year I said goodbye to SmugMug – and I’ve been attempting to add Flickr back into my routine more regularly (but this may be changing – more on that later).
We’ll go into what I did with SmugMug later on in this article. The hardest one for me has been being more purposeful with the work I share. I think the reason it’s been a challenge is that I’m still not satisfied with any of the methods I’ve been using for sharing my work. But that’s something to keep working on this year!
Goodbye SmugMug – hello multi-sites!
If you recall – there was a point where I had two sites chno.blog and chno.co. These two different domains were used for different things – my blog and my print site. With chno.co being hosted on SmugMug.
I quickly began running into limitations of SmugMug’s styling and theming and the control I could have over the website. As I ran into this further and further I began also considering the domain problem. Why the hell did I have different domains?
That’s when I began considering sub-domains as a proper option for managing the different sites that I’d want in the chno.co network. It turns out WordPress has a solution for this!
I migrated to a WordPress multi-site in 2024, and the change has been great. Now all of my sites (blog-, dev-, and gallery- .chno.co) share one consistent setup for theming and styling – and plugin management.
I’ve found that by following this process, I’m able to much more naturally achieve the styling that I’d want on the different sites. The major roadblock remaining in this work is setting up print purchasing on gallery.chno.co – but that’s a project to overcome this year.
Starting and Stopping with Flickr again.
At the start of the year in 2024 – I began uploading to Flickr again. While I enjoyed the process – and the visibility the platform offered I quickly grew tired of some different aspects of the site.
- Uploading
- Gallery Styling / Organization
I had to resize every image and when I’d bulk upload images they often would fail on upload – and for the scale of images I wanted to share on the site it just would not work long-term. So I decided that instead I’d begin focusing on uploading instead on gallery.chno.co.
I’ve had better experiences managing multiple uploads at a time as well as having complete control over the layout of the galleries and albums. And this is one less “charge” for me to worry about with my photography. For those reasons I’ve canceled my Flickr pro subscription and plan on no longer checking the platform.
Sharing less to impact more.
This is the hardest bullet for me – and the one that while I tried to execute on last year – it’s a toss-up to say whether or not it was a success.
I think the reason it was a success was that I slowly (but surely) stopped sharing my work last year – I’ve been focusing more on just making the work for myself. I found that when I was trying to pump out weekly articles showcasing my work, the work I was sharing didn’t always live up to my bar for “being worth sharing”.
Outright stopping sharing work isn’t a good solution long-term though, as I enjoy sharing my work and getting it an audience. All of this brings us to this year, where I once again want to focus on sharing less while being more purposeful with deciding what work I do share.
I plan on having the gallery curated more meaningfully. I want to focus on sharing the best work I have from the destinations I go to – not sharing work just to share work. I hope that this results in a more methodical and put-together body of work being showcased.
Bringing Us To 2025
So now that we’ve talked a bit I think it’s good to close out the article with a summary of the changes I plan on making this year.
- Setting up print purchases through gallery.chno.co
- Focusing on curating galleries with a well thought out structure to them on the site.
- Writing more about my experiences photographing and thoughts while I practice it here.
I think if I can even get the first two done this year I’ll be happy but I’d love to get all three done. Here’s to executing on our goals in 2025!