New Blog / New Site / Stop Moving

Since the middle of the summer I've been working on getting a photographic identity of sorts.
A new portfolio website is up, designed by my brother who had much patience with me during many changes.

I've also switched over to wordpress for my blog. It's been a good few years with blogger but WP is a little more nerd friendly for me.

Also, for anyone who still had my portfolio at www.phphoto.net .... it's changed to www.peterhoffmanphoto.com

So ---- new bookmarks for ya.
Portfolio : www.peterhoffmanphoto.com
Blog: www.peterhoffmanphoto.com/blog

Both the website and the blog may still be in need of tweaking, so be patient.
Thanks and see you on the flipside.

Sweet and Sour Grapes

Harvest for wine here in Ohio. Beautiful morning, fall is coming.

separation anxiety

an unintentional juxtaposition of two of my lives, and an Eritrean reverend. Slowing down still yields mistakes. Slowing down a little more ...

Transitions

The last light at the old house, and thank you so much for helping us...

from the ongoing, sporadic Bryan House project.

Textures : People and Land

I'm going through frames I made during my fellowship this summer. It's always good to edit when you are somewhat removed from the work, it opens your eyes. This pair stuck out to me when considering the title. There will be a show in Nelsonville, Ohio with images from me and colleague/ classmate / very talented photographer Jim Korpi at the end of Sept., supposedly at Stuart's Opera House. Details to follow when I get them. I'd love to see anyone and everyone there, especially the Athens folk.

Been back in town (Naperville) for two weeks and though I was pretty enamored with the rural lifestyle and the beauty of the land I saw this summer I am now wondering if I didn't quite appreciate it enough. Just a few weeks back in suburban rat race has done a number on my psyche. I can't keep up with it all, and stories like this and this from the DNC have me grasping for ways to stay positive. As a side note, if the Republicans happen to treat people like, well people, at their convention they just might look a little better. Not that that means much to me. Gah.

Inside - transitions.

I've always been really attracted to organizations that help those help themselves. If, as a photographer, I could spread the word of these organizations that reward hard work with the potential to grow from more hard work in some capacity, I think I can feel satisfied. It all fits under the whole "sustainable" umbrella that's trendy these days. In vogue or not, I feel it's important. Besides the environment, people need to look at things through a long term economy. Band-aids all fall off eventually.

The Bryan House will house refugees who have already established themselves as productive stateside, and rewards them with the chance to buy a home. Still pretty much being worked on, the refugees that live here will have their rent invested
over the course of the year, and returned to them at the end for the chance to put money down on a house. The benefits of homeownership in a community are undeniable. It's healthy both for the individual families and for the community itself.

I'm still in the beginning of this project, as the house is really still under construction, but every time I am home for the next year (or more), I will be checking in. I also am fortunate to be able to make this project myself and for the folks that organized the Bryan
House. I get to piece the project together on my terms and will be looking at it as such, so it may not turn out looking quite like a photo story at the end, which I am quite excited about.

So far the Bryan House is a bit of an abstraction, it's a place of hope and tolerance but also a place that needs some work. I expect the full vision to be realized very soon, however. Really exciting. It's a place where that "American Dream" has the potential to be realized.
The people behind (Rick and Desiree Guzman) it are some of the most driven and sincere people I have met and I truly hope this project has boundless success....I also think that their model is quite original (I haven't, nor have other folks I've met, heard of such an opportunity for refugees) and have hopes that once Bryan House has more concrete successes to speak of that this model will be considered and adopted elsewhere. It's truly a model of sustainability, progress, tolerance and reward to those who work for it.
The speed and magnitude of their fundraising to get the project off the ground was a very inspiring start.

Complicating things when I was shooting some interiors / volunteer work yesterday was the unfortunate malfunction of my wide angle lens on the Hasselblad. I am hoping to shoot this project entirely on MF film, but with this lens out for 4-6 weeks and a possible shoot or 2 coming up this week, I may have no other choice to go back to digital. Breaks my heart.

Also, thanks for comments on the website. Thanks to my brother and some tinkering around I hope to have a solution that both satisfies my vision of tasteful presentation and everyone else's ease of navigation. But it won't make everyone happy. So be it.

Website woes.

I'm working on getting a new portfolio site done these days, and have gotten some good feedback from some knowledgeable folks but it leads me to a battle. I'm not a web guru, nor do I think any photographer really needs to be / should be. Course the more knowledge the better but that's not the point.
I want my website to be pretty bare bones, and looking around at all my options there are companies who make photographer websites for anywhere between 400-3200 a year, yearly fees included in some. Ok, I can understand why it's worth it and would pay that much if they actually had a SIMPLE, classy and smart design. Maybe to some that's code for boring. To me it means less bullshit.

I just wonder what other people like more? I find beauty in white space, and the more of it the better, if you ask me.

Here are some sites I really like, looking strictly at design....(of course there are some great photos here too)
http://www.eliotshepard.com/
http://platonphoto.com/index.html
http://alecsoth.com/index.html
http://www.yerinmok.com/6/index.html (really dig this one)
http://www.graememitchell.com/
http://www.elizabethweinberg.com/ (also really nice)
http://evanhurd.com/
http://www.simonnorfolk.com/

These are all lame, static, whatever by some standards. But there is no b.s. in getting to the photos, no sound effects, no crazy ass illustrations floating around, no growing and shrinking thumbnails, just clicks and photos ... isn't that how it should be for the most part? Where is the template website that looks simple enough to be professional and unique, but not lame. Can these sites really get people work or would an editor come across this sort of site and not bother because it's not slick and flashed out? (Besides some of the names on this list that don't even need a website at all to get work).

More importantly, do you folks (the 2 that read this I guess) like these sites? Or do you want action, sounds, buttons, etc. Cuz I hate that shit, but maybe I just need to get over it ....

I guess here's the alternative of what it could look like if I unhappily plunked down cash for a flash template (after months of saving)...I have no problem with paying $$ ... it's just no fun when it's not for a design you're really satisfied with.

http://www.thomaskokta.com/
http://www.laforetvisuals.com/main.php
http://www.heatherwalsh.com/
http://www.blusites.com/antonio/

Now I'm talking strictly design here, nothing about the photographers.

I don't know, I feel like my photography is more straightforward, formal and static. This is how I like it, I think it's who I am generally and how I see the world, and I feel it has it's place. I don't see it fitting well in these types of sites. Maybe I'm wrong.
Would welcome feedback generously from anyone who has a thought.

I've had a website since before I really had pictures worth looking at, but it's so important these days, stressed so much as one of your biggest marketing tools ... I sure don't wanna mess it up.