SEPTEMBER 2025 – An AI generated image shows the number 3,000 using candles on a cake in an office environment. © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com/Photo: ChatGPT
The story behind the image
Time flies.
About four years ago, on the 25th September 2021, I re-opened zanzig.com, a domain I own since 1999. From 2000 to 2020 I used it to exhibit photos I had taken over the years. It had been popular in the beginning, but my stamina had vanished a decade after launch, and I stopped actively maintaining the site around 2013. By 2020, it was hopelessly outdated. Then came you-know-what and given the massive uncertainty, I decided to close the site for good.
But soon I felt the need for an online outlet for my photos, ideas and thoughts. After a few tentative steps with free photos hosts, I realized that I really wanted to keep full control over the content and its presentation. So I turned away from shaky and sometimes dubious photo services and decided to re-open zanzig.com on wordpress.com, which dramatically reduced the complexity of site management and enabled me to focus on the content.
And it has become a lot of content since 2021 – this is post # 3,000. Yes, that’s three thousand posts!
I have been posting (and will continue to post) photos from my archive, from the family archive, and antique photos I acquired over time. A new area of interest is the topic of AI generated images like the one at the top.
I consider any of the photos presented on the site as good and attractive. Sure, not all of them are stellar but I don’t care. As long as I enjoy an image, it is okay for me. And I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. This constant stream of photos is intended for you. For your enjoyment and inspiration. To discuss with your friends. To make you laugh – or weep.
THANK YOU for visiting my humble site. I really appreciate your presence.
Mark
Once upon a time…
…there was an avid photographer who decided to have his own domain. And yes, that guy was me. And so I registered zanzig.com in January 1999 just to save the name. What for? Honestly, I had no idea. I just did it.
When I started to do more serious photography and did a couple of longer trips to exciting countries and places the photos started to pile up. So, I decided to publish some of them on the Internet. On a very boring page with minimalistic design.
In August 2002 I suddenly had a lot of time for my tiny web project because my employer, an awesome 3G mobile operator in Germany, went out of business. I focused on improving the main page. My first goal was to get rid of my picture on the homepage! I now wanted to give the visitors an immediate impression of what they could expect on my site. I picked the Padrão dos Descobrimentos in Lisbon which is quite dramatic, especially as the explorers in my photo are facing dark clouds. Yet they are fearless and ready to do what they have to do:
In July 2003 I felt that the old design was simply not good enough. In fact, it was still quite boring and already looked quite old-fashioned. I did a complete makeover of the site. I went away from the minimalistic design of the past and introduced a real site navigation to help first-time visitors quickly finding what they were looking for. I put tiny teaser articles on the main page to attract them to the content. For the first time I created a logo – an abstract version of the Lisbon monument of the previous design. And the makeover paid off: visitor numbers and page views reached new records following the changes.
The next major revamp of the homepage came in July 2005. I realized that people did not really read the teasers on the homepage, mostly because the page looked too noisy, and the willingness to read on the web was close to zero. So I removed the texts and focused on just four beautiful photos representing the individual topics of my site: Trip Reports, Beaches, Cities, and Various. The page looked much cleaner now. For the relaunch I created a new logo that symbolized what the site did – it brought visitors to exciting places where they wanted to go. Virtually, that is.
In August 2006, I did further refinements. However, these were minor changes compared to the more radical changes of the past. I altered the logo slightly to reflect the fact that I was now working completely digital (for new photos), and I changed the typography of the logo. Also, now it now said just “Photography” instead of the previous “Travel Photos & More” claim. Also, the four small images were replaced by just one large image which I updated manually once a month. For August 2006 I picked a photo that combined the themes of travel and photography.
In June 2008, I added a photo of me and my Canon 1Ds mark II camera to the homepage, for credibility and to add a certain personal touch. Other than that, over the past two years I tested a number of techniques, like a unified social bookmarking tool, banner ads, and links to eCom sites. None of these performed well, so I got rid of them. Two things worked, though, and I kept them: the (old) blog, and the link to photo assignments.
Finally, I added a feature to display a random hero image on the homepage in September 2008. Visitors would now see fresh content with every visit of the homepage. By 2012, I had more than 100 photos from my portfolio in the list of random images, and the odds to see the same image twice was minimal.
I kept adding content to the site now and then, but the overall site design stayed the same until Spring 2020 when I took it offline.
The new zanzig.com has been launched in September 2021 as a simple WordPress blog running the Rebalance theme. It now presents a constant stream of selected photos from my archive in no specific order. I simply pick images that I like and that match my mood at the time of writing.
The high resolution image
| Creation Date | 28-SEP-25 09:15 |
| Digital Image Source | ChatGPT |
| Digital Image Source Format | PNG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 1536 x 1024 Pixels |
| Copyright | © by Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com/Photo: ChatGPT |
Zanzig.com Photo Hub 
Happy Anniversary, …✨
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