Welcome in, folks and fellas!
This is the first time I can greet you on my very own website!
Zouberi Photography is turning 15 this year, so it really is about time, right? Actually, I wanted to have such a sweet little space in the interwebs for quite a long time.
Back in the days, we had web 2.0 with MySpace, DeviantArt and Flickr. Heck, even Photobucket wasn’t that bad, was it? All of those were places, where I shared some of my photos. Today, where is such a place? Instagram turned out to be a video platform, after all. Even the polaroid camera is not part of their icon anymore. By the way, have you ever tried to upload a series of like 50 photos to Insta? Spoiler: you can’t. And hardly anyone is going to scroll all the 20 pictures you can put in a single post.
So, what I desperately needed was a different kind of web space. I tried different kinds of social networks amongst other things, but none og those really worked for me in the end. As a photographer, you audience is not just to be found in that one place, like Facebook or Instagram or whatever alternatives you might find. Additionally, people won’t stay in that one virtual space.
During the past 10 years, I’ve been working as a live music photographer at concerts and festivals in 4 different countries. Almost all of that work was done for small music magazines and was published on their websites. I even got some of my shots printed! So far, so cool. But in early 2024 my main mag (Vita Nigra) closed its online doors – probably forever. That meant, from one day to another, all of my photos published there over the years were gone. Well, not completely vanished, as I still have them, but they are back to an unpublished state now. And that’s not were concert pictures should remain!
Now, back to myself: I’ve had the website idea for quite long. Just some years after starting into digital photography, I began to create online portfolios – yes, plural form – for my works. Different portfolios for different audiences, for different aspects or projects of my work. That was quite some labour for me, but it was also close to my goal: having that one place, where I could show whatever I want, whenever I want and how much I want.
Since school days don’t count (we only learned some very basic HTML there and CSS didn’t even exist), the first time I really learnt to code a website was back in 2016. After designing a web presence for my dad, I started working on my own thing. I had some prototypes ready in 2017 and wanted to continue my efforts in 2018. Well, that was the year when the GDPR was passed, the European General Data Protection Regulation, followed by a lot of more laws, depending in which country you were in. Every EU web designer was confused and unsure about this and some, like me, just gave up. I threw my website plans to the dust.
So, times have changed again. After losing my main webzine I was working for, I needed a new place. I was recruited by another webzine like 10 minutes after the old one closed, but that was not enough for me anymore. I wanted to have a place I can actually control, I can run myself and last but not least I do own. I then got back to my good old web design books and the first thing I realised was that it’s not the same anymore. My knowledge was outdated, rusty and just not enough for the modern, responsive project I was thinking of.
But I was motivated. In 2024 I always said, I’m gonna do it later and whoosh, 2024 was over. So, with the start of this year, I decided to go all in. That means, in my free time of course. No more excuses, but some hard work and you know what? It all already payed off, when I said to myself: “Okay, we’re ready to release now!”.
Of course, not everything is finished right now, there’s still a lot of polishing to do and I will have to upload tons and tons of photos to have them all here one day. “The journey is the reward”, right? Right!
For now, you can browse at least some of my recent shots on this website, test the hell out of it features and please send me some feedback, if you encounter something weird. I can now sleep easier and fill up my batteries to be able to continue this big personal project. =)
Have a great week!
Zouberi
