Let me know what you think of the new look.

I’ve spent some of my time this month entering competitions on Viewbug. Take a look at my photos here. I’ve also started trying to sell some of my work on Etsy. Take a look at what I’m offering for sale here.

This week I have worked up a redesigned interface for the Blogs page for Sandbach School. Using the Premium Pixels theme from Themeforest.net  as a starting point I made some slight modifications to the theme to adapt it to better fit the requirements of the school. This theme and the addition of the Strictly Auto Tags plugin on the admin side will improve the SEO of the site and make it easier to group posts and find information within the blogs. The new design also improves the look of the site and incorporates the schools twitter feed into the footer. One important design feature of the new site is the header/toolbar at the top, as although it may look exactly the same as on the other Sandbach School sites the one on the new “blogs” site is generated by a custom plugin I’ve created specifically for this purpose. This plugin will eventually be activated across all the sites and will create a central point where admin users can adjust settings for each of the sites while the plugin’s backend ensures that branding is automatically maintained between them. Ultimately this ensures the schools image is preserved across its network of sites, the code is more streamlined and there is less code for me to write. The theme is still a work in progress and there is still a lot to do but I’d value any feedback anyone has to offer at this stage, Thanks.

Also, last weekend I had the pleasure of photographing the wedding of the lovely Jane and Ross at Cranage Hall, Cheshire. The weather held out and it was a lovely day for all. I’m currently working through, editing the photos of the day, which I’m really happy with and I hope to be able to share on here soon. Please come back and check them out when they’re done.

Just finished another site! The latest site is for an inspirational family who are raising funds to support several deserving charities. Paul Bowyer is running the equivalent of 5 marathons in 5 days to raise money for JDRF, Ronald McDonald House and CLIC Sargent.

The website was created to deliver information about the event, communicate times and dates etc and so that people can donate or sign up to run with him of support them in some other way during the event.

It was a pleasure to work on this project with him and to help in some way however small. I wish them good luck with the event and I encourage everyone to check out 5in5withpaul.co.uk to see just how inspirational this family really is.

Click here to visit 5in5withpaul.co.uk

In the midst of all this hard work I also gave into peer pressure and bought myself an iPad, no wonder I never have any money!

On the photography front I’ve done  a small shoot with Andy Scott a local musician and a Photo session with Sandbach School’s cast of this years Pantomime, Robin Hood and the Babes in the Wood. More information about the pantomime and it’s success can be found at sandbachschool.org  I’ve also taken some pictures for a call centre in Stoke  for Children in Need.

Last term I also helped out with a workshop at Sandbach School run by Lord Whitney who are two very creative people indeed, go check them out. I’ve included some of the images I took on the day in the slideshow above.

I was recently asked to produce a portfolio of my flash work so I thought I’d share it on here too. You can find it at www.matthewdmorgan.com/flash

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been given a new job at Sandbach School, I’m now the web developer for their public websites. The next few weeks will be spent rewriting the sites to make them more efficient and easier to expand in the future. The job involves developing the backend of the website in PHP, javascript, html and CSS and using the built in functionality of WordPress to make the site easier to add content to, ultimately making the frontend of the site a more useful resource. I’m really excited about the challenge and can’t wait to get started. If anyone reading this has visited Sandbach School’s website and has any comments, feedback or suggestions please let me know.

Okay, so I said I wouldn’t get myself a Playbook until I’d written my application.. I changed my mind! I’ve been so busy over the last couple of weeks and I’ve made no progress on my app, I was tempted by rumours about what RIM was promising from upcoming updates for the Playbook and I felt I deserved a treat for getting the developer job at work so off I went to PC World. It’s a bit rough around the edges but in a nutshell I love it.

Everyone should check out the Sandbach Concert Series. The Sandbach Concert Series is aimed at promoting music making by youth and community groups of Sandbach and surrounding areas in conjunction with professional musicians.

This month the Sandbach Concert Series has invited me to display some of my photography work. I’ve chosen to show off some of my Wedding and Portrait work so if you know anyone that might like to take a look send them along.

Here are a couple of photos that I took over the weekend whilst in London with the Sandbach School Art Department. Enjoy!

Photos are from the British and V&A Museums.

RIP Steve Jobs!

Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and former CEO who died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, created a series of seminal electronics products, reinvented several industries, and built Apple into a $350 billion juggernaut.

He will be missed, but what does the future hold for Apple now?

In a followup to my posting about Cheryl Cole in Afghanistan here are a couple of images of 32 Engineer Regiment during their medals parade last Tuesday. The sun was shining and it was great to be a part of it. Congratulations to all of 32 you’re an inspiration.

For more images and to buy prints visit store.matthewdmorgan.com

Over the last week I’ve been working on the redesign and update of the Sandbach School’s Sixth Form Website. The site is still a long way off being finished but I am very happy with the rapid progress that I have made in the last week. The groundwork for the site was done by a colleague who due to a change in position could no longer maintain the site. The Sixth Form Open Afternoon was scheduled for the Wednesday just gone and so SMT asked if I’d step in and do what I could prior to this to ensure that all the relevant information that potential students might require was accessible. The above pictures show how the site developed over 7 days.

What I’ve Done

Lucky for me the new school sites are built on WordPress so I could hit the ground running. I stripped the website back to the very basics and updated some of the layout adding the Blueprint CSS Framework to simplify making amendments later on. With a now more semantic layout I could begin work on the look of the site.

The site has been kept simple using the colour scheme that my colleague had already put in place and the layout was built to draw the eye to the most important information on each page. Custom Fields, Meta Boxes and Custom Post Types were also set up to give control over where certain information appeared. Like on the schools main site I also added a drop down toolbar with the addition that on mine using a built in form the user can log directly into the schools online learning system.

The site is still evolving so any comments or suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.

This week I’ve chosen some of my favourite ‘dark’ images. Once again let me know what you think.

Next week I hope to add some prices for the designing and printing of wedding albums and post images of my brothers medals parade to follow up on the group that were with him in that photo with Cheryl Cole in the Mirrror’s article last week. Watch this space!