If you’re reading this article on or around the date it was posted, then you’re experiencing ULTRAsomething’s brand new version 2 website. Visitors from the distant future are more likely gazing upon some yet-to-be-designed variation, meaning this post is now out of date — so just tell your A.I. synopsis-izer to skip it.
In truth, calling it version 2 is inaccurate. The site bounced off its first satellite at the turn of the millennium — coded entirely in Dreamweaver, and with the singular purpose of hosting my online product design portfolio. It endured several redesigns over the years, before succumbing to its first major upheaval in December 2008 — when my coding switched to WordPress, and the site’s purpose shifted into the photography (and sometimes music) blog you see before you.
From 2008 through 2025, the site and its purpose remained mostly unchanged, albeit with numerous redesigns along the way. At the end of 2025, I released my So Far So So anthology book, which seemed like a perfect time to jettison the old site and begin anew.
The most crucial thing was to scrap the rickety 18-year-old WordPress code upon which this site was built. Though ULTRAsomething may have looked good to the naked eye, the code supporting it was made of twigs and gravel, held together with a heaping helping of coding bandaids, glue, and work-arounds. Every time WordPress updated their code, I would have to implement more hacks to keep the site online. So, my first order of business in 2026 was to re-code the site from the ground up using only the absolute latest WordPress techniques.
Since the old site functioned rather well for my needs, save for not incorporating a proper shopping cart (which the new site also doesn’t have), I decided to keep it structurally the same. So, it looks and works almost exactly like the last site — perhaps not quite as elegantly, but elegance requires code maintenance that I just don’t have time for. As part of this process, I also created an 18-year PDF archive of ULTRAsomething posts (one PDF per year), with each PDF containing all the posts, photos and reader comments for that calendar year. My initial plan was to remove ALL previous HTML content from the web, but I’ve decided to leave it online for the time being. Historians can choose whether they want to read the old HTML posts, or the shiny new PDF downloads.
So, if version 2 (which is really version 3) is essentially the same as version 1 (which was really version 2), then what makes it worthy of the version 2 moniker? The answer is ‘philosophy’.
Basically, instead of altering the way you (the reader) views the site, I’m shifting the way that I (the writer) views it. I am abandoning my self-imposed dictate that I publish something at least once a month (a dictate I previously said I was abandoning, but didn’t). I’m also going to post whatever I want whenever I want. If it’s just a single photo with no text, then so be it. If it’s just a single sentence with no photo, then so be it. A song idea; an amusing anecdote; a bit of news; an unrealized plan; a project in progress — basically, anything I choose to share will get shared, no matter how banal. Previously, with very few exceptions, I would only post fully-baked articles in which I explored every angle of some topic’s banality. No more — baking articles just isn’t how I want to spend my remaining years.
So welcome to ULTRAsomething 2.0. Debugging continues, but the bulk of the work is complete. Hopefully this version’s underlying code lasts until it becomes my estate’s responsibility to update it, and not mine.
©2026 grEGORy simpson
ABOUT THE PHOTOS : Upon the release of ULTRAsomething Version 2, I was determined to stop publishing basic technical information for most of the photos. But I just can’t seem to help myself. So:
Servile : Shot with a Ricoh GRIII.
Spirit Photography : Photographed with a Leica M10 Monochrom, fronted with a Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5 lens.
Tractor Beam Avoidance Tactics 101 : Shot with an Olympus OM-3Ti and a Zuiko 85mm f/2 lens on FP4+, pulled to ISO 50 and developed in Rodinal (Blazinal).
REMINDER 1 : Don’t forget to order your copy of So Far So So from the Beau Photo website. Keep in mind that Beau prices products in Canadian Dollars and not U.S. Dollars. I recognize many readers don’t realize how weak and valueless the Canadian dollar is, so remember — that CAD$65 price tag you see is only (roughly) US$47, which, frankly, is a figurative steal.
REMINDER 2 : If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is neither an aggregator site nor is it AI-generated. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff. Those who enjoy a tactile engagement with photographs are encouraged to visit the ULTRAsomething STORE, where actual objects, including ULTRAsomething Magazine and the So Far So So anthology book are available for purchase.
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