Case Study: Exposure achieves scalable, fast, cost-effective photo storytelling with imgix

How Exposure uses imgix to showcase stunning photo narratives without ever touching the photos

Exposure is a storytelling platform that pairs high-resolution photography with text, but faced challenges common to responsive design: large incoming images, many required display sizes, slow downloads, and potential high hosting costs for storing image derivatives. As a two-person team, Exposure needed a scalable way to serve varied image sizes without ballooning storage or engineering overhead.

They connected their S3 master-image repository to imgix so derivatives are generated on demand, cached, and served in optimized formats (using 100-pixel cache increments and content negotiation), which keeps only masters in storage and charges for derivatives only when viewed. The result: faster page loads, the ability to handle 15,000+ uploads per week, and continued product expansion without increased infrastructure or engineering costs.

Exposure

Kyle Bragger

Developer