Feedback requested on my new website

tim rudman · Aug 27, 2008

Hi everyone
I would very much welcome your feedback on my new website please.
It is not finished yet and I have a number of ideas for additional content (suggestions are welcome for that too), but there is enough there to launch.

I would particularly like to know if it works well on all systems and I would also be interested to hear views and suggestions on the content, as this is new territory for me.

The URL is http://www.timrudman.com

Many thanks
Tim

ann · Aug 27, 2008

Tim,

i found it easy to use, i am on xp and internet exporer.

i am not a fan of putting the photos in those frames, altho, i think i understand why you may be showing your images in that fashion. this is my personal 2cents.

am happy to see your work up on the internet and hopefully making it easier for folks who collect to purchase prints. i have marked this site to show to my students.

blaze-on · Aug 27, 2008

Looks good Tim...easy to read and follow. The images look very nice as presented and all seems to work on my firefox browser on a Mac except this one page (attached)

arigram · Aug 27, 2008

I really like it.
Simple and straightforward design with no flash bullshit, which is clear, fast and easy to navigate.
The colors and design is very much "Tim Rudman", that is remind me of your books.
Great job.

Btw, tested with Firefox 3.01 on Ubuntu Linux 8.04.

Merg Ross · Aug 27, 2008

Tim, beautiful work! Congratulations.

Perhaps for pricing you could put a range, without being specific as to size and process.

Thanks for the opportunity to view your work.

www.mergross.com

gordrob · Aug 27, 2008

Hi Tim - I use XP and Firefox and the site loads with no problems. Only comment is probably the same as blaze-on in regards to the text running into the frame on the home and bio pages. It makes it look like the pictures are on top of the text until you read the content. Very well done site and the images in the gallery are outstanding.
Gord

snallan · Aug 27, 2008

Works fine in Opera v9.26 on XP. Though as above, the text on the home and bio pages runs up to the frame.

TheDreadPirateRobins · Aug 27, 2008

Tim,

I like it. Great photos. My only criticism is that if I were you I would take off the bit about being "under construction." All dynamic sites are under construction and always subject to upgrade and change. I wouldn't point that out. The only reason I went beyond the opening page is that you had posted here that you had some work posted. If I had just happened upon your page through a google search and seen that I might have though, oh hey, he's not ready yet so I will just back click and find another page.

Love the Iceland photos!

Adam

bobwysiwyg · Aug 27, 2008

Looks great, easy to navigate and love the pictures. Thanks for the monitor brightness test function, it helped tweak mine.

Bob F. · Aug 27, 2008

Firefox 3 on Vista: same problem with text running into image as above - looks fine in IE7 (I suspect the vspace and hspace commands in the IMG tag are being overridden by css - css is notoriously browser sensitive). Other than that, no problems at all.

You might consider putting at least an indication of price for sales: many people will assume they are too expensive for their budget when they may not be and will not ask.

Personal opinion: I like the way the galleries are done and the images look crisp and beautiful.

The overall look is very simple and elegant: I like it a lot.

Cheers, Bob.

photomc · Aug 27, 2008

Nice Tim, clean and simple - a trend I hope to see in more sites.

Thanks for sharing your (and the work is all I expected it to be)

36cm2 · Aug 27, 2008

Tim, the site and your work are excellent. I noticed that when you enter slideshow mode, the slideshow only presents the photos on the particular page you are on (e.g. if you are on page 1 of black and white toned photos, the slideshow ends with the last photo on that particular page). Users might find it easier to use the slideshow if it were to continue through all of the photos in the category, without having to back out and move to the next page within the category. I went through the slideshow for page 1 and assumed when it stopped that I had seen all of the black and white toned photos, until I noticed that there are 67 in that series and I hadn't seen that many. Just a minor comment. Hope it's helpful.

Leo

pentaxuser · Aug 27, 2008

Tim Site seems very straightforward to navigate. I tried your hints on monitor calibration but ended up with highlights from about 90% being indistinguishable from each other while the shadows end remained much the same. With my previous settings I can distinguish all except 0 and 2% and this is as close as I can get.

So unless my monitor calibration is unusual or I am doing something wrong then the hints only made things worse. Nobody else has commented on this so maybe I am in a minority of one but if others found your monitor calibration hints not to have improved things then it may be worth adding a few caveats to the hints.

It could simply be my eyes as well. I have tried Ralph Lambrecht's step wedge and his instructions on his site and found that once again the 0 and 2% were very difficult to distinguish. Like yours there were no problems with highlights

pentaxuser

tim rudman · Aug 27, 2008

Thank you everyone so far for your helpful comments. I do appreciate it.

Ann,
yes we had lots of discussions about print presentation. I'm still a bit in 2 minds about it, but my prints are intended primarily to be matted and hung so it seems appropriate. I gather it is easy to change design globally with new website design technology (not that I would know!), so we'll wait and see.

blaze-on, gordrob, Bob F,
thanks for that. I will pass it on. Hopefully it can be fixed.

merg, Bob F,
Re prices: I had hoped to include a shopping facility but things got delayed and I went for this as an interim measure. I'm so busy right now it's hard to get everything done. I will pay attention to that soon. I'm sure you are right.

The dreadpiraterobins (and I can't begin to guess where that name came from )
I hadn't thought of that, thank you. I wanted to indicate that there was more to come, - but how much I'll be able to do before N Year I don't know, as I will be away a lot in the US. A good point. I'll have to think of a way of re-phrasing it.

36cm2
Yes, I raised the same point with the person who is writing the code and I agree with you. We are trying to find a work-around.

Thanks a lot to all so far. What a great resource APUG is!
Tim

Annemarieke · Aug 27, 2008

It is looking good, Tim. The images look good in the frames.
I love the Iceland images!

Anne Marieke

Jeff Kubach · Aug 27, 2008

Wonderful work and the website was easy to use. And I'm a novice.

Jeff

Marco B · Aug 27, 2008

Tim, a beautiful website with stunning photo's. The "Volcano at Grundarfjordur" is one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen... wish I had the money to buy it, which I unfortunately don't at the moment. Invested a bit to much to keep my own work going.

Just one remark: I am a big fan of automatic slideshows as an optional feature. Personally, I don't like the need to click through each and every photo to see them all. An optional automatic slideshow feature would be welcome.

bill spears · Aug 27, 2008

No one else has mentioned this Tim so I'm assuming its either my monitor or my eyesight but the small font looks a bit...how can I describe it ...
'fractured' or broken up ??
Everything else seems to work fine and I'm really crap with computers !

Beautiful work and some great images. Enjoyed very much.

Bill

Fintan · Aug 27, 2008

Hello Tim, I love the look and feel of your site. Your gallery is superb.

In terms of sales I would think you should have more info instead of contact me for price. I know you may not have standard pricing but you could say from £x to £y. Maybe a little more blurb.

I'm on an apple mac with opera and I think some of the text flows too close to the images, eg on your about page. I'm not sure if that looks ok on your computer.

I think the layout of the home page could be reworked a little, the white border of the image is not consistant with the white border on the other images. Paragraph breaks and margins could be a little more consistant too.

I hope that doesnt sound too picky.

Fintan

Terence · Aug 27, 2008

Having to move the mouse to get the "next" or "prev" buttons to show up in the galleries is a little annoying. Not terrible, but annoying to me.

And I have to agree. "Volcano at Grundarfjordur"? Wow. "Ruin" was a close second

Steve Sherman · Aug 27, 2008

I really enjoyed perusing your site, easy to navigate. Simple straight foreward.

Imagery is suburb, especially like the West Pier series.

Congrats!

Claire Senft · Aug 27, 2008

Everything on this very attractive web site worked well with Windows XP 97. As far as suggestions go, it would be helpful to know what is the site's purpose.

Kevin Caulfield · Aug 27, 2008

As Bill Spears noted, I found that the font looks small and "broken up". It looks like it is italicised, but each letter is "broken" about half way up its length. It is still readable, but uncomfortable to read. My eyesight is not that bad. I'm using Internet Explorer on a PC. Apart from the font, everything looks neat and well set out.

bdial · Aug 27, 2008

I like the look, and the speed. It seems to work fine on my Mac with Safari.

tim rudman · Aug 28, 2008

Claire Senft said:
snip. As far as suggestions go, it would be helpful to know what is the site's purpose.

I wonder if you could expand on this a bit for me Claire?

I see it as follows:

The main purpose is to access to some of my work. I get requests about it for a variety of reasons and not being very net savvy have put off addressing this for far too long. It will take me some time to build up the galleries section as I have been shooting and printing for a long time. (I also have to decide what to include/exclude and how to classify work, which is a bit of a headache!)

Also, I receive requests about available workshops and should have online information in place for reference. As I don't make a living from them there is no regular programme format here - it varies according to what requests I get and what I can accommodate. Actually I do them because I like to help keep these processes alive. And they are fun.

In due course I plan to include some writing, news, product info, occasional newsletters, articles on printing techniques which I hope might be interesting and useful to people.

It will also be a shop window for my work.

Tim

Feedback requested on my new website

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