While I was dabbling with web-based income possibilities, I decided to try to go back to one of my main passions — photography. I had been going out and doing landscape photography for my own enjoyment for a few years, but in order to make money I had to change my focus (pardon the pun!)
Combining my passion for photography with my love of kids, I decided to try my hand at kids portraiture. Starting with word-of-mouth, I got a couple of bites, and was immediately successful — my first client spent several hundred dollars on portraits of their kids!
I created a very simply web site, then over the next few years, re-invented to website a few times to improve on it. I found a few screen shots on an Internet archive site, included below. Although I called myself “Hershel Belkin Photography”, I took the URL “belkinder.com”, which I thought was cute, combining “belkin” and “kinder”.
I posted the first few business cards that I created (starting with a really horrible one!), and I found a few sample of my early work, posted here as well.
On the first web page I actually had a GIF that demonstrated the merging of “belkin” and “kinder”:
Found this archive of my very first photography web site. Featured image is missing…
Next generation site:
A few early samples:
