My name is Donald Bates known online simply as DBatesPhoto.  I am a Photo Hobbyist, web designer and web manager from North Alabama near Huntsville.

I got my start in Photography at an early age and when I began to take it more seriously in the late 1990s I began showing off my work on a web page I created on my AOL Account. That first page Shots Around Town can still be seen even though my account has been gone nearly 10 years. Shots around town eventually became Southern Shots my first real website. Originally on AOL, then Tripod and eventually a personal domain. I have used it to showcase my images for about 5-6 years now in various ways.

With the exception of a few College classes I am completely self taught. After my site grew and I became better at web design I got rid of the free software on AOL and Tripod and began working with FrontPage Express.

From there I moved on to FrontPage then on to Go Live, Dream Weaver and HTML editing. To help out some friends and give myself more practice I began working on sites using some of the extra space of my hosting plan to build and host sites for them. Those sites started out as sub-domains and many have grown into domains of their own.

Southern Shots is now here to showcase the work of friends and colleagues that I work with along with my own. As ModelSami.com and DCraftPhotography.com along with some other sites moved to separate domains from Southern Shots I felt it was time for Southern Shots to move to the next stage.

While I do not consider myself a Pro Web Designer by any means. I can help out others wanting a simple site. All of the sites to the left are examples of my work. I manage TVP as well as my personal and professional sites as well as all of the others. You can contact Sami,  Barry from Bluegrass Babes  or Dan from D Craft Photography to find out first hand about their satisfaction with my work.

As The other sites I manage take priority over my own please bare with me if they are not updated as often as some of the others are. I update My Personal and Photography sites as new content comes in or I find other ways to update them. TVP is a group collaboration and with the exception of the gallery it may be updated weekly or only every year or so.