Luminous Landscape Website Update

Luminous Landscape Website Update

March 30, 2015 ·

Kevin Raber

We launched the NEW Luminous-Landscape website about a month ago. This was a major revision that required a lot of work from a team of website developers as well as Chris, Michael and myself. This long overdue change was made to enable LuLa to grow to its full potential.

The launch has gone pretty smoothly especially when you consider there are over 5500 pages of content stretching back more than 15 years. A lot of this content was written in ancient and forgotten HTML editors like Front Page (anyone remember that one?), which meant we needed to write special import scripts to do the content conversions. It sounds easy but we did have some challenges. So, here’s an update of where we are with the LuLa website and what you can expect over the next month.

The new site is a lot easier to work in, especially the editor and image import. This now allows us to be publishing on a regular basis. When we are traveling we can set articles up to publish at a specific time and date.

The articles are presented in a much nicer format now, with black type on a light grey wash background. For years we have had a request to go to this format and it was long overdue. Based on the emails we have received, the majority of our readers really appreciate the change.

Each article has an accompanying author photo and bio. All articles from January of this year will have this

feature. We are working with the authors of past articles to update the database with their current info. Once we get the information it will be applied to each bio in the system.

Home page images have received some good feedback. Our readers have been asking for images that they can zoom in on or see larger. That is now easy to do with the home page photos. We have decided to limit the home page images to just four and they will be updated on a weekly basis. If you missed one you can visit Kevin and Michael’s home page picture galleries with links available right under the home page picture.

Also in this area under the home page picture is the update for the latest Rantatorial and well as Michael’s Pholg that he maintains on the Endowment site. There is also a badge to show the number of readers currently on the site. You can see the number of people on the forum at the bottom of the forum’s index page.

The big news is that we have recently launched the NEW Video services page. We really feel we got it right this time. You can easily locate videos of interest, preview and view samples and easily purchase a video for playing or download. The player is really great and scales to your monitor and internet speed. It plays well at full screen and on mobile devices.

Now that the video section is done we can get back to the production of videos. We have a number of projects in the works. We will soon release a major new multi hour release – Shooting With The Masters. Look for an announcement on this soon. Our Fuji X-T1 tutorial has been a huge hit as well as Capture One tutorial. We will be starting production very soon on video tutorials for the Olympus as well as the Sony A series cameras. We will also add an update to the Fuji X-T1 with some advance tips and details on the new firmware release features.

We aren’t done yet. Capture One has a new release and hopefully Lightroom will have one soon also. We will be doing updates to both of these software programs too.

We have also been thinking of reviving the old Video Journal format. We have been working on content and should soon have enough to launch a new video journal. This will be available like our other video journals on the site. More on this soon.

We are going to be cleaning up our header. Our logo will appear larger and we will remove the Rockhopper Workshop logo and the Endowment logos. These will be part of the workshops menu item and the Endowment will have it’s own pull down menu. Plus, we will be adding a tag line (since some people that think Luminous-landscape is a landscape lighting company). Thus we are adding the tag line for Luminous-Landscape – The Photographers Knowledge Resource. We feel this identifies who we are and what we are providing.

The NEW Latest Rantatorial listing on the home page

We are very aware of one shortcoming on the site and we certainly have heard from readers about this. This is the search and index feature that we had on the old site. We didn’t want to hold up the launch of the new site so we launched with a simple search box feature. It works well but can sometimes provide pages of results to scroll through. Well, don’t worry. We are working on a really cool way of doing searches and seeing the results. It may take 6-8 weeks to complete but will be worth the wait.

Over the coming weeks we will be adding a new box on the right hand side of the home page with the Latest Rantatorials. This will be located above the Related Articles link. Now you’ll be able to see the newest Rants and click right through to them.

In addition to all the website stuff we have been finalizing workshops for 2016 and beyond as well as some workshops for the fall of this year. Look for announcements on these very soon.

We will soon do our first email blast. This email will have information about the most popular articles and reviews as well as news about upcoming workshops and videos. You can sign up for the newsletter by clicking on the sign up box on the home page.

I’ll give another update in a month or so. We are working on some other projects that we hope to able to share in the next few months. In the meantime I hope you enjoy the content and the forum as well as our NEW video section. If you have any suggestions regarding LuLa please feel free to drop me an email.

Luminous-Landscape is a membership site. Our website contains over 5300 articles on almost every topic, camera, lens and printer you can imagine. Our membership model is simple, a Dollar-a-Month ($12.00 USD a year). This $12 gains you access to a wealth of information including all our past and future video tutorials on such topics as Lightroom, Capture One, Printing, file management and dozens of interviews and travel videos.

To continue reading with unlimited access join today for $12 a year

New Articles every few days
All original content found nowhere else on the web
No Pop Up Google Sense ads - Our advertisers are photo related
Download/stream video to any device
NEW videos monthly
Top well-known photographer contributors
Posts from industry leaders
Speciality Photography Workshops
Mobile device scalable
Exclusive video interviews
Special vendor offers for members
Hands On Product reviews
FREE - User Forum. One of the most read user forums on the internet
Access to our community Buy and Sell pages; for members only.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Kevin Raber

See all articles by Kevin Raber

Photography is my passion and has been for 45 plus years. My career in photography has allowed me to travel the world, meet some of the most interesting people on the planet and see things I could never have dreamed of. My goal is to share the passion of pictures taking through photographs and teaching with as many people as I can hoping it brings them as much joy and happiness as it has me. I do this through Rockhopper Workshops and other projects as well as teaching at my Gallery in Indianapolis.

Join for just $1 per month

Join for access to over 5000 in depth articles, hundreds of hours of video tutorials and access to the largest Photography forum.