Obscura was born out of a specific need: some street photographer wanted a lean and fast portfolio site that took images seriously, but none of the existing tools felt quite right. That street photographer happens to be the same person who built Obscura — and CØMA Photography is the result.
The Site
CØMA Photography presents a portfolio spanning colour and monochrome candids from Hamburg, London, Dresden, and other cities. The galleries — Polychrome Streets, Monochrome Streets, Collateral Damage (because there's more than street to photography) — are organised by mood and style and ordered chronologically. Locations and tags provide alternative ways to browse the content.
The site runs on the Editorial default theme with dark mode, masonry and grid layout toggles, and a PhotoSwipe lightbox. It's fully static, hosted without a database or server-side runtime. What you see when you visit is exactly what Obscura produces from a folder of photos and a handful of Markdown files.
If you're curious what a finished Obscura portfolio looks and feels like in practice — have a look. And remember: all of this comes out of the box!
The Backstory
I wrote about my journey in a blog post titled "Kein Code, kein Problem!" (German for "No code, no problem!"). It's the story of someone who spent a decade drifting from hands-on development into management roles — finding a way back through AI-assisted development.
Obscura was built entirely through collaboration with Claude Code. Not generated in one shot, but specified, structured, iterated, and critically accompanied over time. As the post puts it: "Wer Muster kennt, braucht keine Syntax" — those who understand patterns don't need syntax.
The First User Testimonial is… Mine!
CØMA Photography is both the reason Obscura exists and the proof that it works. It's a portfolio built by a photographer for his own use, with the tool he built for exactly that purpose. There's a lovely simplicity in that — no hypothetical workflow, just someone using the thing he made to do the things he cares about.
If you build something with Obscura, we'd love to see it!