Web site critique

I've just completed a major overhaul of my web site (www.ianleake.com) to:

• Generally smarten it up (less words, more pictures)
• Manage the galleries using a database and automation (because less time managing the site means more time with a camera)
• Do various other neat things like print sales

I'm planning to re-print and re-scan most of the featured photographs (many of them have pretty poor quality scans), and add many more over the next few weeks as I catch up with my backlog. But there should be sufficient there for now. (And some have never been posted online before.)

Would anyone be willing to spare a few minutes to test / critique it for me?

As an incentive, should you need one, I'll send a print to the person who offers the most useful test / critique. I'll decide who that is, but you decide the print. How's that for a bargain?

Many thanks in advance.

OK firstly:

It takes up the left hand side of my screen, not hi-tec its a laptop, actually it might be fine on my other PC, except I'm HD widescreen. The right is blank.

Other than that it's excellent, quite different and appropriate. And more importanly you !

Ian

The good: The photographs are just gorgeous. The harmony of tones and values is stunning with the high key flesh tones blending beautifully with the background color. The high contrast work is gorgeous as well. This is one of the few sites where I actually think I can discern the quality of the LF print even though web viewing is the great homogenizer.

The okay: Though I'd like to be able to click on a thumbnail and see a larger image, the size is at least adequate to view the photograph.

The....well....'perhaps you might reconsider': Navigation 'next' and 'previous' (as with the apug portfolios) would be much more user friendly than having to use 'back' to go from 'graph to 'graph. Also the title page is more wordy than necessary. As others have observed on critiques of other sites, you have seconds at best to 'grab' a viewer before they move on impatiently. Your artist's statement and such is only of interest to those who stay with the site long enough to want to know.

I hope it brings you lots of traffic and sales. The 'product' is certainly worth it!

The site loaded very quickly and navigation was equally quick and smooth although I agree with jovo about a next and previous tab. This makes navigation much simpler for the visitor. I do like the simple and subtle layout and colour scheme, it compliments the elegance of the images. My one minor crit would be that the tabs you click for more information are too dark for the beautiful simplicity of the rest of the site. Can I suggest you try a more subtle colour that would reduce the contrast between the tabs and the background but not make the tabs difficult to see as they are an important element in giving visitors information.
Congratulations Ian, it is a wonderfully simple site that shows some excellent work to good advantage.

Thanks Ian, John and Les.

I thought long and hard about the layout, and finally decided to stay with a screen area that fits on most laptops (including my work one which is all I have when I'm travelling). This puts a constraint on the size of scans - much of my work has a portrait orientation and I don't want anything to fall off the bottom of the screen. What I'll probably do eventually is add a button which opens a new window with a bigger image in it.

My beta tester was also insisting that I added "next" and "previous" buttons, so by popular demand I've added them. They cycle through the whole gallery, not just the 9 shown on the gallery entry page.

The home page has been vexing me a bit. I agree that it should be simple, but I don't really like the minimalist pages that are the norm nowadays for photography sites. I'm often a bit irritated to see a page with little more than a picture and "click here to enter" - I'd rather go straight to the meat. I also want to make sure that no-one can complain that they weren't warned about the content. This is particularly important because I feel the need to cover myself a bit in case I someone at work browses my site in the office or I get a call from our HR department... So for now I think it'll stay as it is.

Thanks again for your help. If anyone else has any opinions then I'd love to hear them.

well done overall

Ian:

exceptional work, and very spare and clean site design that complements the work nicely.

one man's opinion, FWIW: I think you still do too much explaining. Your work explains itself, and the viewer should be allowed to experience it on his/her own terms.

I'd keep the "Welcome to my photography" page text, as it's succinct and well-written, and tells the visitor all s/he needs to know about you and your philosophy. I'd ditch the explanatory text on each of the "nudes", "glimpses", and "perspectives" pages except for a one-sentence intro line.

Furthermore, while I and your fellow photographers like to read the technical details, I'm not sure the general public cares so much. what about a link with each photo to a popup or a rollover that displays the tech stuff for those who want to know?

One last thing while I'm on a roll (you asked for it, man! ): consider putting "find out more about buying" and "find out more about platinum" links on each gallery section main page, as well as just on your home page, so that they're easier to find and don't require navigation away from the point of sale, so to speak...

(If you peruse my site you'll note I don't follow any of my own advice--my site is a mess, and is in dire need of an overhaul. So my "advice' to you is my own wish list!)

Mike Sebastian

I know you are keen to set up the pt workshops and the website does enough to attract interested parties. The site seems to be aimed at photographers and not so much the general buying public/ collectors.

I would strongly suggest that you make the images larger as a lot of the quality is lost and the size does nothing to attract my attention. You have built the web page according to your own laptop specs. I would suggest 1024x768 size.

The homepage bothers me. To elaborate, I find that as I read from left to right, I am overwhelmed by a lot of text. I would suggest swapping the image to the left hand side. This will ease my brain into the site.

Once I'm "in" the site, I can't find a way back to the home page, and to your links to the more technical information. Or am I missing something? And to the point above, I find the photo to the left with text to the right easier to read.

Lastly, your nudes are lovely, Ian, but where are your gorgeous pears??? :confused: A page of still lifes, I think would add variety to the site, and, having seen them in person, well... they are too gorgeous to pass up!

You show nice work bud much to small, just much much to small!
Armin

MikeSeb said:

one man's opinion, FWIW: I think you still do too much explaining. Your work explains itself, and the viewer should be allowed to experience it on his/her own terms.Mike Sebastian

Click to expand...

I'll disagree with Mike here and say I like the fact you explain your work as much as you do.

I like the basic colour selection a lot but would also like to see the pictures larger than they are.

I'm not sure if designing it for a smaller laptop screen makes sense, I'm currently thinking through these issues for my own site and have decided that I can count on most people using 15.4" screens or larger. I think I can get away with a vertical dimension of 550 pixels without them dropping off. I'd like to know why you feel you needed to size the pictures for smaller screens?

Regards, Matt.

Thanks again for your comments everyone. It’s very generous of you to spend some time helping me with this.

And a special thanks to Suzanne for thanks for mentioning my pears I agonised over how many galleries to put in and the subjects they should cover. Actually, gallery 2 (Studies) was originally intended for still life and other pleasures. But I decided in the end that I just didn’t have sufficient material that I wanted to share which is why I dropped it. I know I’ve stored up a problem for the future because I’ll continue making still life studies every now and then, and I’ve got several other projects that will need a home eventually. But I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. So for now, Two Pears will have to remain where it is on my studio wall

I’ve made several changes as result of everyone’s feedback, which if you’re interested I’ve summarised below.

A few of you have remarked on the page size and resulting image size. The pages are designed for a 15” screen at 1024x768. But another fundamental design principal that I alluded to earlier (but didn’t say explicitly) is that the user should never have to scroll down the page. Once the browser window and the page banner / footer have taken their real estate, and allowing for sufficient empty space so things don’t look crowded, there’s about 360 pixels or so for a picture. I’ve increased the images to a standard of 360x288 and moved around some of the other elements to make space. I think this definitely looks better now. At some point I may add a link to a bigger picture, but not for now.

I’ve added a “home” link in the top left corner of the banner (I hope it’s not too intrusive there). The ianleake.com logo was actually the link back to “home” but as several people (including my beta tester) couldn't find it there it obviously wasn't working… I’ve also moved around the home page so the picture is on the left (yes it looks better there), and I’ve greyed the text slightly so it’s less dominant. And I’ve taken off most of the “Find out more…” links, which I think were a bit confusing. The route into all these pages is now from the Dialogue page (simpler I think). I’ve also made some changes to these pages (including finding some more suitable photos – I particularly like the “Find out about buying a print” photo ).

Thanks again for your help everyone.

Ian.

The home page looks a lot better now and the images are an acceptable size. The pre-typed emails are a great idea and also think that the video of the model is superb, nice promotion!

Perhaps the video should be brought more to the "front" of the website and not buried. It is just as much an indication of how you produce your photographs as it is about showing potential models their working environment.

However after viewing it twice, the video stutters and maybe needs uploaded again or reduced in quality for smoother playback. Subtitles may help also. Who is the model?

Very nice site. Clean and professional look. I'm running 1280x960 and it looks a bit odd with the small size of the page in the upper left of the screen. Might it look better centered? I noticed that the image on the home page is pixelated, not sure if that is what you wanted? [edit: Ian, I refreshed the page and the pixelation went away]

Jon

Thanks Gary and Jon.

Gary - the video is as much for fun as anything else. I should probably compress it as bit more as the file is about 22MB... As you can probably guess from the wobbly camera work, it was recorded by an amateur on my teeny-tiny non-analogue camera. Neither of us were aware she was recording it which, I think, is one of the reasons it works. The model's name is Honey and she's great fun to work with (she's also one of the callypigian pair (there was a url link here which no longer exists)). I can put you in touch if you like. And before anyone worries, Honey has given specific permission for it to be used (over and above my normal model release).

Jon - there shouldn't be any pixelation, although at this size you can see the surface of the paper quite clearly. If it's pixelation you saw then it's more than likely that the cause was the old smaller image getting caught up in a cache somewhere and resized by your browser. That should sort itself out eventually.

Again, thanks everyone for your help.

Ian-

I sent you a pm.

Patrick

That's it. I've spent all day glued to my computer and released a new version. I'm done in now and can't cope with any more big changes...

If anyone's wondering, Patrick's was the most helpful advice. So thanks Patrick (and I've sent you a pm). And thanks to everyone else for your advice. Now I shall have to get printing and scanning to replace some of the older and less nice scans.

Ian, I had a look at your site yesterday but didn't have time to comment, now I can't get into it Never mind, it sounds like you have had some very good advice and I don't think I had anything extra to offer anyway!

I will say I do like the perspectives portfolio very much (the quality of the images is superb), and also the 'snatches' of nudes - sorry I can't remember what you called them. Suzanne's mention of the pears has got me wanting to see more - I agree with her suggestion that a still life page would be a great addition. In case you didn't think you have enough to do

catem said:

Ian, I had a look at your site yesterday but didn't have time to comment, now I can't get into it

Click to expand...

Oops, I managed to leave my "down for maintenance" page active. Thanks Cate, I'd have probably left it there for weeks if you hadn't spotted it...

Oh yes, and the (there was a url link here which no longer exists) are here