Lightbox view

Beginning today, you’ll see a brand new style rolling out for galleries at Raymond Parker Photo.

For the past few months, following the rebuild of the site, captions have been missing from galleries. This problem thanks to the developers of ProPhoto abandoning support for that function in the latest iteration and not following through with an update to add it back.

The lack of titles was a great loss, especially to collections like the Eighties Vancouver portfolio, where locations and dates are so important. Return visitors will notice the extra descriptions on those documentary photographs. Are they useful?

The unfathomable decision to ditch such a basic feature sent me on a search for a replacement that led to dead ends, website crashes, and novel new combinations of profanities.

If I can credit ProPhoto for anything, besides the underlying theme that provides the look of this site, it is their helpful support. As in my initial review, again I’m grateful for a suggested solution: FooGallery.

The basic WordPress plugin is free. Bonus! But I opted for the pro FooBox lightbox to create the styling you see now. I opted for the modern “flat” design, à la Apple. That may change (let me know if you like it).

Initially, I’ve recreated the “Projects” galleries (see navigation bar). They are: Eighties Vancouver (as above), Faces of Resistance, and Phone Photos. The latter images are a bit small, since they were made with my old, non-responsive theme in mind. They will be embiggened as soon as I finish the other projects I’ve been putting off. In the interim, I’ve employed another handy Foo feature which forces small images to fit larger screens, albeit with an expected loss of resolution.

I decided to exchange the old sliders for the Projects galleries to grids. That way viewers can click on any thumbnail that strikes their fancy. That will launch the lightbox and options to click back and forth ← →, start as slideshow ▷ bottom right, or go back to thumbnails, either by clicking outside image area or on top right X. Captions can be dismissed or turned on by clicking small x next to caption or directly on photo. Go fullscreen with the icon at top left. (see screen grab photo above).

So far, I’ve recreated one slider — for the post on new photos from the Fujifilm X-Pro2. It has simple forward and back arrows, with same option to go to lightbox and full screen.

Of course, this being 2017, galleries are responsive, sizing to whatever device you are using.

I’ll be chipping away at the rest of the galleries as time allows. The latter require some extra wrangling. (Fini 22/9/17)

Let me know in the comments if this new design and function work for you. What features do you like/not like?