Brian Lavall Photography

The Site

blavall.net is designed and built by me, Brian Lavall. It's been a continuous work in progress since around 2012. From 2014-2024, it was built on Wordpress. In 2024, I launched a new web app, rebuilt from the ground up as a custom, modern web app.

My goal for the site is to provide readers and viewers with an immersive digital photography experience. I want this to feel more like a digital magazine or an art gallery than a standard photography portfolio site.

As a software engineer by trade, this site is a two-fold portfolio for both my photography and software engineering. In addition to my primary goal of sharing my photography work, it's also be a place where I can showcase my engineering and design skills and experiment with the latest web technologies.

Technology

The current version of blavall.net is built with SvelteKit and Tailwind CSS. The content backend is powered by Payload CMS, a self-hosted content management system that lets me own and control all my own data. Hosting is on DigitalOcean.

Icons are by FontAwesome and fonts provided by FontSource. Both are self hosted to keep from sending data to third party services. I use a Umami server for analytics. Umami is self-hosted, cookieless, privacy-respecting. No data leaves my servers.

Many additional open source software packages are used to run this site, and just about every other site on the internet. Support open source software, it is critical to the future of the open web.

Photography

All images are made by me, Brian Lavall, unless specifically noted otherwise. I shoot primarily with Canon and Fujifilm cameras and lenses. Most photo processing is done in Lightroom.

Publishing Philosophy

This site follows the POSSE model: Publish on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. Social media sites are distribution channels. This is the canonical source.

A Note on Artificial Intelligence

I do not and never will use AI in any of my creative or artistic works. I don't use AI to generate images or produce synthetic photography. I don't use AI to write my photo stories, field notes, or any other editorial content on this site. All photographs on this website were made by me with a camera (unless otherwise credited). All of my Photo Stories were written by me.

I do use some agentic development tooling and language models in my software engineering and web development work, including on the development of this website.

Accessibility

Accessibility is something I'm actively working on. If you encounter a barrier on this site, something that makes it harder to read, navigate, or use, I'd like to know. Reach out at [email protected].