This section will eventually grow into an elaborate sub-site,
detailing many aspects of the behind-the-scene tidbits during
the production of the Eyeful-Tower site, plus its historical
background, and future plans. For now, we'll simply take a
quick look at a few technical tidbits and design
decisions. But, first, a word of explanation is in order, on the
relationship of the 2 sister sites:
The Birth of Eyeful-Tower
On September 5, 2002, I decided to create an advocacy site
with 9/11 memorial as
the premier gallery. I called it
Cameralot. The idea is to focus on beauty, goodness & truth,
via the enjoyment of photography. I discussed the idea
with my collaborative friend Diane Howe, who validated
my concept, confirmed feasibility and suggested a few
refinements. With a 5-day development
cycle, I had to take drastic measures to achieve maximum
efficiency. I basically worked furiously day and night. The site was launched on Sept. 11, 2002. By October 13, 2002, it
had a total of 12 galleries and 6 special features.
(In
2007, I discontinued the cameralot.com domain, and hosted it
with Eyeful Tower.)
On Sep. 20,
2002, I decided to add
a sister site as a viewpoints & perspective feature of Cameralot.
The term Eyeful-Tower was coined and it conveys that purpose
nicely.
Eyeful-Tower remained in proof-of-concept skeleton state for 3 years. On January 1, 2006, I spent 5 solid days to give the site a
much needed face-lift, with completely new streamlined and
structured design, with vastly expanded content from my last 5
years of writing. With the site design infrastructural underway, I'm now ready to focus on content.
There were over 140 pages (some of them elaborate essays) at last count, and growing rapidly. They
represent over 800 hours of development and writing time.
|
Cameralot |
Eyeful Tower |
Common Points |
Philosophical & thought
provoking. Heavy reliance on symbolism.
Poetic.
Use metaphor of camera, telephoto
lenses & macro lens. |
Motif |
Camelot: where Truth, Beauty & Goodness Reign. |
Eiffel Tower: On a Clear Day, You Can
See Forever. |
Signature Theme |
Blue sky, beautiful scenery & faces, colors of fall,
exciting & attractive design elements |
Night scene, candle light, streamlined,
distractions kept at absolute minimal |
Color Schemes |
Great varieties. Mostly vivid pastel colors. |
Consistent. Neutral. Mostly gray and
white with an occasional splash. |
Design |
Free-wheeling. Each gallery has unique design to
showcase different techniques and suit the particular
topic. Many animation effects. A casual site feel. |
Consistent throughout the site. No
animation. A more professional and conventional site. |
Mood |
Cheerful & blissful, always sunny, easy. Personal. |
Subdue, reflective, heavy at times.
Impersonal, matter-of-fact. |
Multimedia |
Lots of high resolution photos, music & video. |
Minimal multimedia content. |
Humor |
Compulsory and in abundance. |
Used sparingly. |
Emphasis |
Fun. Creativity. |
Serious. Pondering. Getting message
across. |
Roles |
Indulgence in aspiration to Truth, Beauty &
Goodness. Advocacy for such ideals. |
Provocative. Blunt exposé. Holistic
self-search & -examination. |
Reality |
Completely Fantasy-based motif. Aspiring to ideals
and beauty and goodness. |
Strictly Reality. Confront ugliness and
unpleasantness as a matter of course. |
Entertainment value |
High |
Low |
Style |
Metaphoric. Polite & Pleasant. Simplistic. |
Direct. Brutally Honest. Complex &
Layered. |
Perspective |
Fictional/International/Universal |
USA-centric |
Visitor-contributed content |
Plenty |
Minimal |
Industrial Focus |
None |
Occasionally: IT Industry |
Fig. 1: Comparison of Cameralot and Eyeful Tower.
Production Tidbits I've
always liked the idea of hand-scribbled notes at the cafe. It
conjures such feelings of spontaneous energy and historic
moments in the making. In reality, most of my materials were never actually captured
on napkins. From 1985 to 1992, I was using the classic 2-page
per day Daytimer system (paper), before switching to the Sharp
PDA, then HP HPC, and Psion 3 and 5, Palm and currently NEC
WinCE. Showing an
actual photo of my original Daytimer page would prove too
cluttered and distracting. A napkin would also be more familiar to the
average person. The decision was to reenact those objects
via electronic fabrication. Most of the photos
in this site are fictionalized. The napkins with tea stain
and my hand writing scribbled on them are just results of clever
computer graphics production. Even the candies, croissant and other props
are simply after-the-fact studio shots added on to the
background.
to be continued...
See
also:
I |