One of our first costumers was a photographer named Jara Sijka. Jara is a born highlander and athlete. So when he started taking interest in photographing in 2008, his primary themes were extreme sports and sporting events. He later started to focus on mountain scenery photographing.
Jara is a typical outdoor type that wants to shoot things the way they are and he is not a big fan of computer post-production. So when it came to the question of launching his own photographic portfolio on JuicyFolio, the key idea was to come up with a clean and simple system that would enable Jara to easily present his work without unnecessary computer shenanigans. So he could, in another words, launch his web by pressing only one big red button.
"It is important to me to spend the maximum of my time outside. I don't really understand this stuff so I needed something really simple. Give me a barrel and I will make a good photo with it. But with a computer, I can maybe turn it on and run Lightroom."
First off, Jara tried two of our designs. When he then found the one that suited him the most, we started to further adjusting it according to his wishes. We simplified the menu structure that after that led visitors to the overview of the photograph thumbnails and we got rid of folders and other additional things that Jara did not need. His new portfolio web then became clean, synoptic, and easy for Jara to manage and for his visitors and all sorts of people interested in his work to look at.
Soon JuicyFolio became something more for Jara than "just" an easy platform for uploading photographs, but also a source of many individual services and possibilities that can lead his portfolio to perfection. Without any knowledge of HTML or "behind the curtain" work with computers, Jara soon discovered the beauty of individual thumbnail cropping of his photos or changing their order with only a simple mouse movement.
"I am often updating my portfolio and it is really important for me not to spend an hour uploading to some FTP and then deal with HTML. I just needed something that works."
Resultant portfolio web exactly how Jara imagined it - JaraSijka.com - was completed in about two hours.
With a slideshow presentation of his work on the homepage, a simple overview of all the photos arranged in thematic galleries, and even with a personal blog, to which Jara regularly contributes in order to offer an interesting view behind the scenes of his photographic work to his visitors. Jara's vision of a specific look of his portfolio web then became reality.
"I launched my demo at about 10 AM. At noon, the web was filled with photos, configured, and running on my own domain. Totally awesome. I have nothing to complain about. The technical support is the best, they always helped me with everything I needed."
