Tall Grass Arts Association, an art gallery in downtown Park Forest, IL, is a very busy place.

Now, Park Forest itself is an interesting town. By way of full disclosure, I do serve on the Park Forest Village Board, so I do have a bias in promoting my town. The village has struggled to bring businesses back to the town after its erstwhile “Center” suffered a devastating loss of businesses over a decade-and-a-half ago. But the Arts (capitalized, out of respect) never left. The downtown area is home to two art galleries, the Illinois Theater Company, a beautiful theater, and home office for the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Tall Grass gallery is thriving. Just came home from an opening of the new exhibit, Ink.

The wonderful collage at the top of this article is a collection of various pieces by current Tall Grass artists, something I threw together last night when doing the most recent update for the Tall Grass Arts Association web page. My most recent addition to the site is a collection of pages featuring various artists from the gallery. My favorite page is the face page with the artists’ names. The tiny “T” bullet next to the names is a nice touch, showing what CSS can do for us.

I maintain the site. The design, though table-based, is really very attractive. Put together by Sergio Gomez, it is very solid.
Thought you would appreciate the design, and the collage. We really have wonderful artists.

Sometimes when putting together a web page, we have a need for photographs and little budget. Professional photography is always preferred. If at all possible, a professional photograph of the owners of a company will look far better for a web page than a photograph taken by an amateur. I may know how to use my digital camera, but the camera is a long way from fool-proof.

There are times, however, when we are just looking for generic photographs. There are sites that offer a selection of stock photographs for a fee. Some are reasonable, others not so. Some, however, are free. Free-StockPhotos is one option. Simple, easy to navigate, and with a wide selection of free photographs under different resolutions, the site offers quite a bit to get started.

Look, sometimes in web design, we want to re-invent the wheel. There’s a temptation to make the web page our creation entirely. And, this is not a bad thing. This site also has links to stock photo sites that charge a modest amoung per image. But it’s good to know there are resources that can help us keep our costs down and allow us to achieve astoundingly professional results.