Ok re-did my website from scratch... is it better?

[Foto Ludens]

Thank you all for giving me feedback on my website. I've spent all day today re-doing it, and I hope it's better. I found a little program called JAlbum which did a very good job at laying the skeleton of the site for me to build on.

Is it better? If this is your first visit, is it good? I'm going to try to make the white strips gray on the b&w photography, so that the white line doesn't show between the carrier line and the web page.

the site is www.avillez.com

Thanks,

André

 

[Foto Ludens]

Well, getting rid of those white strips would take forever... is it worth it? My laziness says no, what about your eye?

 

[SuzanneR]

I prefer this design, Andre. Seems cleaner, and the background color works well. I still had to scroll down a bit to see the Sertao portfolios, but the rest worked fine. Could see the photo and the arrow button, which is all I ever want to see when I'm looking through a web portfolio. If you have the time and patience to get rid of the white strips, it may well be worth it. Sometimes, what works on paper prints, doesn't always translate well to a web presentation.

One tweak... when I opened up the motorcycles, it started me on picture number 9 of 10, so I went through it backwards. Not sure if I did something wrong or not?

Also, I think some of the portfolios would look stronger with some tighter editing. Under portraits, you might think about deleting one of the two dog portraits, and in landscape, the cans or bottles in the pond look repetitive, pick the one you think is the strongest. Oh... and the one color image seems a bit out of place. It's a great image, but it such an about face from the rest of the portfolio.

Also, an "about the photographer..." page is a good idea to have.

2 cents

 

[photomc]

Agree with Suzanne, looked at it last night and now this morning...the latest version looks very good Andre. It seems to flow better for me...which translates into I would visit again.

Nice to see all your work in one place....looks great as always.

 

[jstraw]

Big step forward!

 

[Peter Williams]

Looks good Andre. Is that portrait under Motorcyles also painted with light?

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

MUCH better! The new site look is cleaner, more consistent, and it allows you to get a feel for your body of work. It also allows for diversity of style in the body of work, so that the color and the b/w stuff don't clash.

 

[percepts]

Big improvement.

 

[pentaxuser]

No problem with the motorcycles at my end. All opened in the right order. The site's galleries seem easy to navigate.

pentaxuser

 

[Foto Ludens]

Good deal...

Suzanne, thanks for the suggestions on the editing. I'll work on that soon.

Peter,

The portrait is also painted with light, and I learned a lot while shooting it. Hopefully it's the first of many... Actually, I have a few more bikes lined up to shoot (including some big racing team bikes), and I'll try to include portraits in as many shoots as I can. I'll bring some prints next time we meet... should be a reasonable portfolio by then

Ok, I'm off to improve the site

 

[Paul Sorensen]

Small suggestion, but I think you ought to make the word portfolios on your home page a link to the portfolio page and not just the image on the page. I first tried clicking the word and found that it wasn't a link. I do think it is a very attractive site and, of course, your work is fabulous.

 

[Foto Ludens]

Paul, good catch. I've fixed that, worked a bit on the editing as Suzanne suggested, and added an "about me" page.

I started to work on those white borders, got frustrated, and gave up. I'm going to search for some way to process those images in batches.

André

 

[Marcel Bongers]

Improvement website

Hello Andre,

To increase visitors fill in at the photo-properties also the alternate text line. It will be used by search engines to create a link to your site.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Paul, good catch. I've fixed that, worked a bit on the editing as Suzanne suggested, and added an "about me" page.

I started to work on those white borders, got frustrated, and gave up. I'm going to search for some way to process those images in batches.

André

IF you have access to Photoshop, you can make it a batch action, and run it on an entire directory. It may take a bit of tinkering to make sure it works exactly as you want it, but once you get the technique consistent, you can knock it all out in one shot with a few mouse-clicks. If you do this, make sure you have a backup copy of all files before you run the batch, in case it doesn't consistently transform every file.

 

[Foto Ludens]

Unfortunately I don't have photoshop... I use GIMP for now, and as far as I know it can't do batch processing.

I don't know... to be honest I see a little charm in those white borders. But maybe I'm just rationalizing now.

Marcel,

I'll see what I can do about that. Thanks for the hint.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

With the pure black-and-whites, now that I look at them more, it may not be a bad idea to keep the white borders, especially since you're doing the filed-out carrier thing. Helps set the image off from the background a little, and lets viewers know that the filed-out border is part of the image, and not a decorative pattern applied in an image-editing program.

 

[MMfoto]

It looks pretty clean to me. Two smallish things: Some of the fonts are a little boring, esp, the prominant "Portfolio" on the front page, I don't mean to use something fancy, just that I'd look at a few others. I could also use slightly bigger thumbnails on the gallery page, though you may have a reason for the size I imagine.

It's better than mine for sure. Because I-aint-got-one-yet!