Website and Shoots: the Summer Highlights

The summer season is packed with events — there’s something worth capturing every weekend. In Omsk, for example, there’s the red-dress flashmob, the Family, Love and Loyalty Day program, and the strongmen competition. Across the region, we’ve had the 300th anniversary of Sedelnikovo and the upcoming 250th anniversary of Gorkovskoye, the folk festival “Agrafena the Bathing Maiden” in Glukhovka, and even something as unusual as an off-road obstacle course in the RFC format (Krasny Yar).

I’m managing to get around and shoot, but I’m desperately short on time to process the footage. On the bright side, I’ve been able to dedicate a lot of time to the website:

• we have optimized the story-upload process via the admin panel twice already — and now it’s incredibly convenient;
• we have implemented chapter-based navigation within each story, which wasn’t in the original technical brief;
• we have set up a full-size image display so that while the reader is viewing the current photo, the next one is already being preloaded by the server in the background.

I’m also adapting last year’s stories to the new format: breaking them into chapters, selecting photos that give a quick, wordless overview of the topic, and translating them into English. The latter is a real challenge — it means coming up with new, catchy headlines and adding plenty of cultural context notes.

I’m cautiously hoping that autumn will bring a much-needed pause in both shooting and website development, so I can showcase the recent summer festivals of Siberia in all their glory. Well, I might still make it to a harvest festival or even two :)