Responsive Web Design and LESS

Posted on by
responsive

This website is now responsive! I am happy with what I’ve managed to do, it was fairly simple but good to learn the techniques and increase my knowledge of CSS3 media queries. Responsive web design is something I’m really interested in at the moment, like fitting pieces of a puzzle together, and very satisfying when you get it right!

You can see how my website changes with different screen widths at Responsive.is (a very useful web tool) here: responsive.is/allatsee.com. Toggle between devices using the top bar on that page.

The percentage widths of the left and right columns change as the browser size decreases, and at a certain point the whole layout switches to one column only. Before this weekend I’d been setting my CSS breakpoints to specific sizes to match iPad/iPhone etc., but I read an interesting article about just looking at when the design looks right and wrong and setting those dimensions as your breakpoints. It definitely makes sense to me, especially as the range of dimensions of different devices from Apply, Samsung et al. gets wider.

Read more …

RAW – Shooting and editing photos

Posted on by
RAW Before and After Editing

I’ve spent my Saturday learning more about my Canon EOS 600D and its different features. I’ve been researching the best workflow to use when it comes to shooting and processing photos, and I am a lot clearer on this than I was this morning! The conclusion I’ve reached is:

  1. I’m going to shoot in RAW only
  2. Then transfer my RAW files on to my computer and organise into folders
  3. Import RAW files into my Adobe Lightroom catalog
  4. Edit my photos in Lightroom
  5. Export my edits as JPEGs

Read more …

Canon EOS 600D

Posted on by

I’ve wanted an SLR camera for as long as I remember, and I finally bought one last week.

My new camera is a Canon EOS 600D. I spent quite a long time choosing between Nikon and Canon, and in the end just decided I preferred the feel and user interface of the Canon models. I also nearly bought the Canon EOS 1100D but ended up splashing out a bit more mainly because the 1100D just seemed a bit low-spec for the times. If I get into photography, I’d probably want to upgrade the 1100D quite quickly – hopefully the 600D will stand me in better stead in the long term.

My Flickr account is here, I’ll be uploading all my photos there.

I think I’d also really like to get a macro lens sooner rather than later as I’d love to be able to take really crisp close-up photos, the kit lens is giving me slightly blurry close-up photos of flowers, but maybe that is something to do with my technique! I have so much to learn.

New website

Posted on by
New Website Screenshot

I’ve been developing a simple new website for myself on and off for the last couple of months and finally went live with it last week. The motivation behind the website change was that, by giving it a more blog-like feel, I would be more encouraged to keep it updated! I also wanted to learn more about CMS and WordPress as that will help me with my work.

I’ve added in all of the portfolio projects that were on my old site (with one extra, Resurgam) but I can’t believe it’s been about eight months since I left uni. Where has the time gone?! I’ve been doing a lot of design at work obviously but want to get back to doing art/design/whatever-you-want-to-call-it just for the sake of doing it. Just doing little side projects in my free time, that kind of thing. And I also want to finally learn more about photography which is something I’ve wanted to do for years but just one of those things I never got round to.

I’m really hoping to expand my programming skills now (I’ve been teaching myself more jQuery whilst doing this website – so far in the gallery slideshows – eg. here - and the “Back to top” button. Small things but every little helps and I now feel I have a much better understanding of jQuery than I did before I started doing this new website, though I still have a lot to learn) and record that learning curve here too.

So that’s the basic idea behind this blog, we’ll see how it goes!