This is the continuation of a blog formerly hosted by PixelPost. The old blog contents are all still available here.
So why the massive overhaul(s)?

Welcome all to Nomadically Curious Visual Thoughts — Part II.
Its been years since I’ve actually had time to stop doing side projects for other people — and update my two Web sites. Although I don’t really have time now either, I stopped taking most outside Web projects so I could improve my photographic Web pressence. Along with this new blog, I’ve also launched a new commercial site at jonahkessel.com. This site takes the place of my former commercial site kesselimaging.com.

While both sites were in need of redesigns, for SEO purposes and to make a more congruent look and feel between the two, I merged the commercial site and the blog under the domain name jonahkessel.com.

New Photo Blog

The goal of my last blog was to be as simple as possible. All I wanted was one image to show at a time – forcing people to focus on the image with out bells, whistles or gadgets and widgets.

While I still believe in the same philosophy, it ended up being — too simple. While PixelPost does have many themes, none could meet my needs for multimedia. I also wanted to incorporate more of a visualization of time into the blog. Now, you will be able to see more than one post at a time on the landing page. The new comment system now allows for threads and a more visible discussions forum than the former blog.

I also wanted to expand the focus of the blog to include technical discussions on photography, gear and software. To help visualize these conversations a new platform was needed, and Wordpress became the best option.

The blog will continue to show you images from my work and my travels.

New Commercial Site

While the former photo blog functioned alright, the former kesselimaging.com did not. I put a lot of thought into the new site — mostly concerning load times, usability, searchability, upkeep, SEO, the mobile platform, multimedia and longevity of code. The former site — built independently in Flash using Action Script 2.0 was invisible to the mobile platform, loaded slow and in general had a pretty low Web profile.

Although most of you will see the new site in Flash, it has an HTML back — making it accessible to disabled users, and crawlable by bots, spiders or search engines. There is also an iPhone and iPad portal for Apple users that is not based in Flash, and allows me to share content while staying out of the war between Steve Jobs and Adobe.

The former site required all manual updating — there was no actual backend file management system. After browsing through hundreds of photographer’s Web sites I eventually decided to have a custom made site by Livebooks, a company whose reputation in the photo world has expanded tremendously in recent years. Although I designed the front end that you see on your computer, Livebooks has a visual backend that allows me to easily manage content quickly and remotely.

While I wouldn’t describe Livebooks as cheap or quick (it took about 4 months for my site to go up), I am happy with the editSuite (the backend) as well as the site and their customer service, despite some hickups along the way. Most importantly, looking into sustainability of the site — I’m very excited to have a company that is keeping up with technology to be hosting my work and finding solutions for a changing industry.