DevvsPhotoDump First Blog Post ! (5/4/2025)

Today marks the day in which I have successfully added the Blog section to my personal photography website.

I am really proud of this blog section I have introduced to my website, because not only does it allow for me to document my general thoughts while I take this journey on Amateur Photography - it also is something that documents my growth along my journey on Web Development.

DevvsPhotoDump was a project that I've always been wanting to do for a while. I've always wanted to create a dedicated site to archive my photography. I know that there are other outlets available to use to highlight personal photography endeavors, but I wanted to challenge myself to see if I was capable of coding my own dedicated functioning website.

I'm really proud of how DevvsPhotoDump.com had turned out. It really marks a place of growth in my coding journey. This is the first fledged website that I had developed on my own through teaching myself how to properly code in HTML & CSS.

Some of the main fundamentals that I had originally planned for the website, in my original outline included:

1. A index page that had a working Parallax effect on it.
2. An about page that included a working Q&A slider.
3. A dedicated photography dump page, which contained links to different pages with a dedicated focus on a type of photography, with a working image slider, and zoom.
4. A working blog page that utilized a CMS, and in which I can periodically add new blog posts automatically, and without having to adjust the source code.
5. A working Contact page which can utilized for affiliate, and communication purposes.
6. A donation page with a link, and QR code to my personal Monero wallet.
7. A working multipage accessible website.
8. A working navigation bar slider UI, when viewing the website from mobile devices.

So far, as of 5/4/2025, the website itself is 80% complete. Some of the main things I need to finish completely implementing is the parallax feature on the main index page, the working Q&A slider for the about page, and potentially adding a CMS for the photo dump page to help ensure concise, and effective photography uploads from myself. I also would want to fix up some scrappy resolution issues that some of the pages are experiencing.

For the Index page, I had originally implemented a working parallax effect for the main SVG title, however, I had to adjust, and change it, because the code I had originally used didn't work cohesively with some of the other elements of the page.

I'm not really experienced or good at JavaScript just yet, so I utilized native CSS & HTML to help create my Parallax effect. As of right now, I am attempting to learn alternative ways to implement that feature to my website. I know that I will eventually get better and more skilled at coding in JavaScript (and coding in general, because I love computers and how they work) but as of right now, I have other priorities that I need to deal with.

Since I'm planning on only introducing a simple parralax effect, the only element that will be highlighted in the parralax would be the DevvsPhotoDump logo on the index page.

For the About page, it's 75% close to what I had originally wanted. I wanted the DevvsPhotoDump logo SVG to be placed directly at the top, and middle of the screen, followed by a gray box detailing a brief summary of the website's purpose and history.

Finally, I wanted to give this Website a 1940s Noire theme. I was partially inspired by the film noire genre, and found it to be aesthetically appealing.

I'm a huge fan of old detective movies, and the noire genre. The original plan for this website was to give it a dark gray Noir aesthetic, and it was originally inspired by the 2011 Rockstar game, "L.A. Noire."

I hope you all enjoy your time here on my website!