The blog of photographer Kim Ayres

Maggie’s website revamp

It’s over 8 years since I sold my web design business, but it’s impossible to escape completely. Sometimes I find myself thinking of Al Pacino in The Godfather III when he says,



However, there are some jobs I can’t avoid – my own website, of course, and my wife’s.

Maggie’s site has been in need of an overhaul for some time now. In fact it caused something of an embarrassed cough when I recently realised the gallery of her images dated back to 2009.

January is traditionally filled with all the fear, panic and general wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes with sorting out the tax returns (see That Time of Year), but with that finally out the way there were no more excuses available. Maggie’s website needed not just new content, but a visual redesign too.

We’ve gone cleaner and simpler – although don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s easier.



Back in the days when I was a professional web designer, I would often get asked to produce something “simple, yet professional”. What they meant was “cheap, yet professional” and that’s not on the menu. Expensive and complicated – easy. Simple and cheap looking – easy. Simple, yet professional, is the holy grail of design. To make something appear effortless, usually requires a massive amount of work.

If you look at world-class ice-skaters, they appear to glide lightly across the ice as though it was the easiest thing in the world. But it has taken them tens of thousands of hours of practice to make it look that natural.

It’s not uncommon to run into exactly the same misconceptions about photography. Why pay a guy a living wage for just pointing a camera and clicking a button? Anyone can do that. Yes, but not everyone has invested tens of thousands of hours to experimenting, learning and creating to improve their skills so they can take really good photos

And this is true of nearly every profession.

However, I digress.

Maggie has a new look website, with a new, up-to-date gallery of beautiful images to buy, or just admire.

Do pop over and take a look – www.maggieayres.co.uk - or you can even read her take on the new site on her blog (which has also been revamped) – maggieayres.blogspot.com

Next on the agenda is updating her Facebook page…

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