Main Content
About
Hi. I’m the founder & CEO of Imagely.
I’m passionate about my business, family, and Colorado.
Imagely
Imagely makes provides web solutions for photographers. We’re best known for NextGEN Gallery, the most popular WordPress gallery plugin ever with over a million active users.
Imagely is like Squarespace for photographers, but built on WordPress. If you are photographer building on the WordPress platform, we have everything you need from hosting to themes to galleries to ecommerce.
OUR PRODUCTS
NextGEN Gallery – WordPress Gallery Plugin
WordPress Photography Themes
Genesis Child Themes
Photocrati
TeslaThemes
ShowThemes
Philanthropy
Imagely has always had a strong philanthropic focus. Over the last five years, we’ve given away over $50,000 to support humanitarian and environment photography projects through the Imagely Fund. Judges for the Fund include some of the best known environmental and cultural photographers in the world, including Steve McCurry, Nick Nichols, Art Wolfe, and Jim Brandenburg.
QUICK BACKGROUND
I graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Marquette business school in 1998, worked as a project manager at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management in Washington DC, and then spent way too long in graduate school (two Masters degrees in Applied Economics and Political Science, PhD in Political Science). I was a two-time Fulbright fellow in Indonesia.
While in Indonesia, I took a break from graduate school to work as photojournalist covering humanitarian, environmental, and cultural stories in Indonesia for OnAsia, a leading provider of Asian editorial imagery based in Singapore and Bangkok, and for HDNet, a leading provider of high definition television in the United States.
I covered diverse stories including orangutan rehabilitation in Sumatra, Komodo dragons, illegal logging in Borneo, Bromo Tengger National Park, the life of a Mentawai shaman clan in Siberut, the Baliem Festival in Papua, the Pasola festival in Sumba, the eruption of Mount Merapi in Java, protests and floods in Jakarta, and dozens of other stories. Credits and clients included Asian Geographic, the BBC, Conde Naste Traveler, the Indonesian Department of Forestry, the Sydney Herald, Reader’s Digest, the University of Wisconsin, the Wall Street Journal, Yale University, and many others.
I came home in 2007 and wrapped up my PhD in 2008. Academia proved too esoteric, so I joined the United States Foreign Service (diplomatic corps / US State Dept) and was assigned to the be the US Economic Officer in the Republic of Congo. I continue to have a great degree of respect for the US State Department, and especially for the 139th Foreign Service Officer class. But the environment and emphasis there did not fit with my own vision.
So I moved on from that as well, and fulfilled my entrepreneurial destiny 🙂 by starting Imagely in 2009. Not coincidentally, starting my own company also allowed me to move to Colorado, the best place in the world to live.
So that’s the scoop. Thanks for visiting!
Erick