My Turn: My Website is up

[wilsonneal]

I have been working on this for a few weeks as I can spare the time. The last few days I've taken a lot of suggestions and have pulled together something I can live with for a while. Interested in your feedback.
Thanks to The Flying Camera for some valuable feedback.
Dead Link Removed
Neal

 

[jstraw]

The lack of thumbnails..or at least some indicator of how many images there are is bothersome. Just diving into a linear presentation of unknown length isn't an attractive proposition.

The default blue text links don't fit with the design and are hard on the eye.

Page title for the contact page is "Blank."

I like your portraiture.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Neal-

some additional critiques:

What Jstraw said, I second. Give us some groupings (men, women, children, families, environmental, studio, etc), and an indication of those groupings (page of thumbnails, something). Also, lead off with an About page, that has one of your strongest images on it. Something that really indicates your style. Right now, you've got a mishmash of images in a linear, no-particular-order display. This really undermines the quality of your images. I'd also sit down and with someone else who is not emotionally invested in any of your images, edit/cull the herd down to a smaller number of your VERY best. Right now, some of the images are stronger than others, and because they pop in and out at random, the weaker images detract from the stronger ones. What you want is every photo on the site to be an out-of-the-park home run, whereas you've got some that just qualify as base hits, some that are triples, and some that are RBIs. Better to have only four absolute home-runs. PM or IM me and we can do a more thorough review.

 

[rorye]

Hi Neal,
I think you have some really nice photographs there. I would like to know more about them.
I agree, some thumbnails and groupings would be nice.
The photographs themselves I think are great.
Should the "about" page be a bit more prominent?
I'm no web designer, but I like it so far
Best,
Rory

 

[c6h6o3]

My first reaction was quite positive, and the first impression of your website is everything. Click on your URL and you are immediately served up a picture. No splash page with an 'Enter Site Here' hypertext link (the utility of which I will never understand), just straight to the pictures. If it takes me more than 3 clicks to get to photographs on a website (including the site's URL) I'm gone.

I do agree there should be thumbnails, but have the opening photograph there as well. You have plenty of room to do this well. I also believe there should me more photographs on your site. I thought all of the ones shown were very nice and would be very effective in selling someone looking for portraits on the idea of hiring you.

I have to disagree with Scott about the groupings. I've always detested categorization. Your portraits are good enough to keep people clicking through all of them and in that way they'll be exposed to all the different types of portraiture you do without having to label anything. Keep it simple.

Overall I thought it was a good job.

 

[Tom Kershaw]

No splash page with an 'Enter Site Here' hypertext link (the utility of which I will never understand), just straight to the pictures. If it takes me more than 3 clicks to get to photographs on a website (including the site's URL) I'm gone.

I have put an "enter site here" index page on my website because the main content / site doesn't work with Microsoft Internet Explorer (possibly due to CSS), but does work fine with Firefox and Safari.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I have been working on this for a few weeks as I can spare the time. The last few days I've taken a lot of suggestions and have pulled together something I can live with for a while. Interested in your feedback.
Thanks to The Flying Camera for some valuable feedback.
Dead Link Removed
Neal

I like it the way it is. Very simple but attractive. However, you uploaded files, which are waaay too big and too large. You don't need 500k files to show at 72 dpi at this size. Size them for the web and then use something like Photoshop's 'Save for the Web' feature to get them down in size, without losing quality and they will oad 10x times faster!!!

Attached is one example. The original funfam.jpg had 492k. The new version funfam1.jpg has 36k. This looks no different to me and loads 13.5x faster.

 

[wilsonneal]

I like it the way it is. Very simple but attractive. However, you uploaded files, which are waaay too big and too large. You don't need 500k files to show at 72 dpi at this size. Size them for the web and then use something like Photoshop's 'Save for the Web' feature to get them down in size, without losing quality and they will oad 10x times faster!!!

Attached is one example. The original funfam.jpg had 492k. The new version funfam1.jpg has 36k. This looks no different to me and loads 13.5x faster.

Thank you Ralph. And thanks to all the folks who took a few minutes to look at it and make some comments. I've taken them into consideration and made some revisions. I will resize them per Ralph's suggestion, but need to step away from it for a day to get some perspective.

Thanks again. I appreciate the candor, and think the site is better for it.

Neal

 

[MikeSeb]

Neal, exceptional work nicely presented. Second the kudos for avoiding stuff that whirls and sings. Nothing makes me click off a site faster than music or sound.

Agree with the others that small unobtrusive thumbnails would be great; and if you're only showing portraiture, agree that categories probably aren't necessary, since you seem to post only a small number of your best images.

Well done.