John Paul Foster is an American photographer based in Kyoto (Japan), specialising in images of traditional Japanese culture, including Geisha, Maiko, and Buddhist icons.

Author of many books, his inspiration comes from a wide range of cultural and visual sources: from the poetry of William Blake, to Japanese art, from Film Noir and Hong Kong action cinema, to the cities of New York and Kyoto. In his own words "He has been (in no particular order) a student of literature and religion, a writer and director of two award-winning short films, a professor of English as a Foreign Language, and a builder of Lego castles."

After editing together two of his books, “Now a Geisha” and “A Tayu today” (still to be published), John contacted me again to develop a brand New Website to showcase his work; his goals, besides of course presenting his work at its best, were, specifically:

* to have a user-friendly website optimised both for desktop and mobile.
* to migrate his old blog to the same website platform / HTTP address, optimising its design.

As a long term plan, John was also interested in developing an online shop for prints and a page dedicated to his workshops, with booking possibilities, and a multilingual option to access both English and Japanese speaking public.

All these needs pointed us in the direction of Squarespace, which has all these features already embedded; among the 3 custom designs that I created for John, he decided for a beautiful vertical parallax scroll which could summon up in its homepage all the main sections, giving the public an overview of John's whole work; this design also works very well for adding "sections" in a second moment, without having to re-design the site's architecture. Not just this; it's also perfectly suited for duplicating pages in another language, without building them from scratch.

The deal breaker for John, though, was the Blog migration; he was keen in trying Squarespace only if the whole content of his old Wordpress blog, including pictures, texts, categories, tags and all the numerous comments of his public could migrate along with the rest. A fair enough request, since John's blog counted more than 150 posts, each containing all these elements, and manually recreating each one of them was definitely not an option.

So, this is where we started from; John prepared for me an .xml file containing all his old WP Blog data, and I was able to quickly import it using the Advanced Import option in SS settings; after importing the content, I just had to optimize it deleting some double pictures and, following John's directions, style the main Blog page with the features and design he preferred. All in all, considering the amount of material, it was a super successful migration.

Over the course of 4 weeks, John and I worked pretty intensively: John collected for me all his material, neatly divided in folders each containing some very accurate notes, while I started tackling the editing and sequencing for the new architecture, trying to organize and gather his huge production into a simple, straightforward menu.

As it often happens, once the design has been chosen, and the first sample edits are in place, the new website identity suddenly emerges; it is an exciting moment, when both the photographer and I start having confirmation if our ideas were right.

If the main structure and idea work, we proceed with the rest of the edits and sequences, to then tackle the texts' edits, the About and Contact page, and eventually all the last styling touches, including some CSS customization, monitoring together every step to see if still works and makes sense in the whole.

Here you can see the result of our hard work. Please have a look, and let me know if you have any feedback.

John has been so kind to share with me a brilliant “Question and Answer” testimonial on our work together :

“When I decided to have Raffaela build my new site, I had already worked with her twice, to edit and sequence images for  two of my books. Both experiences were very positive, so I trusted her and admired her ability.
However, when it came to the site, I had questions that I’m sure many other photographers would have in the same situation, so I’m including them here to help any who read this have an easier time making a decision.

1. I’ve been using WordPress for 8 years! Will I be able to have a better site on Squarespace?

I have nothing negative to say about WordPress, but I definitely like my Squarespace site better. Of course, this is mainly due to the fact that Raffaela built my SS site, and I did my WordPress site by myself. You can customize a blog more on WordPress because of all the widgets available, but I am still happier with the way my blog looks on SS than the way it did on WP, especially my photographs! 

2. Squarespace seems to be so easy that I can build the site myself. Why do I need Raffaela (or anyone)?

I think this is the biggest overstatement that every CMS or website builder makes. It’s so easy you can do it yourself! Completely wrong, at least for me. Squarespace has dozens of templates, and some recommended for photographers. Raffaela picked 3 for me based on my specific needs, and I wouldn’t have found the one I choose by myself since it is not on the list for photographers. And there is absolutely no way I could have designed my home page, the pages for my books, or my blog the way Raffaela did. She made changes to the templates that I would not have even imagined to do, let alone know how to do. 

3. Raffaela is a photo editor, right? Can she really design a website?

The first 2 times I worked with Raffaela, it was to edit and sequence the photos for my book projects. I was looking for a photo editor, so I did not pay much attention to her other services. I thought of her as a photo editor, which is quite different from a designer. Did she really have the necessary skills, or is this an overstated claim?

As with my other concerns, this one was unfounded as well. Raffaela showed me 3 different designs using 3 different templates, and all of them had different layouts, colors, and fonts. And all of them looked good!  I am very happy with the different page layouts and the fonts Raffaela chose. In fact, she did a better job than the graphic designer I worked with on my branding did!

To sum up, Raffaela has the knowledge of Squarespace and taste in design to build you a site you will be very happy with. And I haven’t even mentioned the fact that Raffaela edits and sequences all your work, which I think is even more important than the design of the site! 

You get a Squarespace expert, designer, and photo editor all in one package, and a very reasonably priced package at that. I can’t recommend Raffaela any more highly.”