Making this website has been a true family effort. Shirley's daughter helped her pick a domain name that represented her vision as an artist, a website service to host her work, and guided her through a multitude of decision points. Her daughter-in-law helped set up a Ross Peak Creations Facebook page. Once all these technical matters were set up, Shirley and her husband completed the hardest part: photographing her paintings. Thankfully her husband is a fantastic photographer. After weeks of effort, the photography was complete and we stitched together a gallery of works for sale representing the best of her life's work.
The fact we accomplished setting up this website when the artist lives in Montana, and her family lives in Utah and Oregon is a testament to the power of the technology tools available today. Here is what we used and how we used it...
- Squarespace domain name registration and hosting
- Google Drive Sheet to share a painting inventory including title, price, and painting photograph file name
- Dropbox to share pictures of the paintings
- Facebook page linked to Squarespace
- Skype and specifically Skype's Desktop Sharing to train the artist
- A good quality digital camera
- A Cowboy Lightbox which is used to take photographs of artwork under diffuse lighting
- Adobe Lightroom to add copyright watermark to photos
Here is what the Cowyboy Lightbox looks like in action.
