It’s pretty cool when you see someone create something beautiful using the “tools” you have provided. It’s even better when they ask a simple question that leads you to helping them create something with those tools that you had not previously considered.

A few weeks back a talented photographer from Belarus dropped a pretty simple and straight forward comment on a recent post from the Charlene Theme demo.

“I want to use it for my photo-blog, but i need to make some changes. I want to make it one column and I want images on the main page.”

Just so happened that I was right in the middle of working on a photo theme, while quite a bit different and not attached to the Charlene theme at all, it did share similar qualities. I figured what better way to develop a theme for possible release than to discuss, one on one, with an intended end user.

After a few back and forth emails discussing the details and why the theme was to be designed the way it was, I decided to take a crack at the request. If he could be patient given my client workload and be open to the possibility that I release the theme after completion then I would certainly look at this a time well spent.

He ends up with the exact theme requested and I get to take a crack at building a child theme from Charlene. This proved to be super easy, the only modifications I made to Charlene were simple modifications that I had already planned to make for an updated release. The majority of the code making it possible to build child themes from it was built in from the start.

It took a couple of weeks and a few breaks in creation but in the end we came out with this. (Small screen grab, see link below for full effect.)

It’s simple and focuses entirely on the content, no frills, no special effects. This is a fine example of when the content makes the page beautiful because I will not hide the fact that the theme did not come close to looking this good when filled with lorem ipsum and a few quick shots of the country side.

Everything down to the language (which I can not read or understand a word of) looks beautiful in the way he envisioned. It was certainly an enjoyable opportunity!

See for yourself http://kovenkin.com/blog/.

Update: The new and improved release version of Full Foto is now available at Papertree Labs.

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