[FullertonImages]

Sorry, I think it's terrible. Not the layout, navigation or images, they're fine, but the fact that it'll have a hard time making any noise on Google at all.

1) It uses Flash - the worst technology for search engines, and you can't even bookmark it.
2) No unique titles, descriptions or textual content of note

Also, as far as I know, it doesn't use any flash at all, and I have it bookmarked just fine.

[George Lama]

I think I understand his problem with bookmarking... if I am correct, he might be trying to bookmark a particular image in your gallery, which you cannot do in a dynamic gallery like yours.

As far as it not working on iPhones, I thought iPhones had one of the best mobile web browsers out there. I can tell you it works on my Windows Mobile phone with Opera browser.

Just want to point out that there's is actually flash in those gallery pages, but it's only the viewer portion that handles the playback of images. It works much better than many other galleries which cause IE to spit up ActiveX warnings all over the place.

Ben, I'm trying out the same exact gallery myself and love how simple it is to setup. Not a bad price either for the pro version. How do you find updating images in your portfolio? Do you make your changes in Lightroom and upload them directly to the website?

[MJB DIGITAL]

I love it.

I love the style you are showing.

I love your niche.

I'm not gay.

hahah

[justinr]

Thanks. I haven't spent any time on SEO/content optimization yet. I'll probably get around to it in a little while. But honestly, organic searches aren't a huge concern of mine. Almost all of my intended traffic is direct. Plus, the blog content will help for searches after a while, since it's built in the same domain.

I think you will find that it does use flash, right click on the page and look for 'page source', you won't see a lot of HTML there.

Search engines use crawlers or spiders to hunt around the net looking for site content, they can't normally see into the flash parts of a site so you are going to experience problems with SEO. But don't worry about that for there are around 5 million new sites joining the web weekly so whatever you do you are going to be struggling to be heard above the noise, especially when 1m of those site are probably photographic ones!

I've come to the conclusion that looking to a website to bring in customers is now becoming a waste of time unless you operate in a very narrow field or were in on the internet scene early, so I think you are right not to be too bothered about that aspect of things.

Maybe it's a cultural difference but the whole 'blog/about me' thing just doesn't work on this side of the pond. Spending a page telling the world what a cool kinda guy you are is a sign of ego rather than ability, you are only as good as your last photo, not band session. But if it does the job in your part of the world then go for it.

Photo websites should be easily changeable (although I never change mine as much as I ought and there is some rubbish that needs taking down) so make sure that you can get into the site and juggle with the images. It's surprising how you may come to hate what you absolutely loved just a month or two beforehand.

Coming to the pictures themselves there were some good rock climbing shots and the rest were very competent, but there was not a lot there that shouted, 'hey, look at me, I'm different,' especially in the landscape section.

At the end of the day it all depends on what purpose the site is there to serve. Just having a site for the sake of it is not the novelty that it was.

Anyway, I wish you all the best with it.

Justin

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Last edited by justinr; 01-16-2010 at 08:11 AM.

[FullertonImages]

I love it.

I love the style you are showing.

I love your niche.

I'm not gay.

hahah

Thanks! Not for not being gay, that's up to you. But for the feedback. Haha.

[FullertonImages]

but there was not a lot there that shouted, 'hey, look at me, I'm different,' especially in the landscape section

Is being different bad? Or o you mean, that they look as if the sole intention of them was to be different? I promise that I have made no special effort to be 'unique' or have a different style, I just shoot it like I see it. But I would certainly hope that my images don't just look like everyone else. Otherwise, why bother taking them? There's no point bringing something to an already crowded table unless it's at least different than everything else on the table, and preferably also better. Thanks for your feedback!

Ben,

Nice job! The homepage really gives a sense of your style and capabilities.

I wish more websites...heck, I wish MY website offered such a visual overview.

Best,

Tim

[FullertonImages]

Ben,

Nice job! The homepage really gives a sense of your style and capabilities.

I wish more websites...heck, I wish MY website offered such a visual overview.

Best,

Tim

Thanks, Tim! Just put a lot of thought and time into the design, and also become really good friends with a web designer, and you can have a great site too! My friend and I really just took our time, and really picked apart an scrutinzed the site, and it took forever, but it was so worth it. There are still a ew more tweaks that I would like to make in the next few weeks.

[cb750r]

Nice looking site, and the advantage of flash is no right click theft of images!

I'm starting down the path of building a site, its nice to see a nice clean design!

[GoremanX]

Nice looking site, and the advantage of flash is no right click theft of images!

oh boy...

BEHOLD! The wielder of Alt-Prt Scrn who can steal ANY AND ALL IMAGES on a whim!

You anti-picture-theft boys make me laugh. You should all get jobs with the RIAA.

[cb750r]

A little off topic for this thread but if you think a print screen offers the same resolution as right clicking on a high res photo on say, Flickr... your sadly mistaken.

As a viewer of his website, the photos are presented in a way that shows off his craft while limiting his risk from giving away the milk, and not being able to sell the cow!


If the purpose of a professional photographers website was to give away high quality images, I highly doubt it would be a paid profession for long.

Again, nice clean site, your photography is great balance between the outdoor elements and the people enjoying them. I hope to get more photos like that under my belt, as I currently am pretty loaded with landscapes!

oh boy...

BEHOLD! The wielder of Alt-Prt Scrn who can steal ANY AND ALL IMAGES on a whim!

You anti-picture-theft boys make me laugh. You should all get jobs with the RIAA.

[GoremanX]

A little off topic for this thread but if you think a print screen offers the same resolution as right clicking on a high res photo on say, Flickr... your sadly mistaken.

As a viewer of his website, the photos are presented in a way that shows off his craft while limiting his risk from giving away the milk, and not being able to sell the cow!

If the purpose of a professional photographers website was to give away high quality images, I highly doubt it would be a paid profession for long.

How would the ability to right-click allow me to "steal" high-res images on this site? That makes no sense.

The pictures on his site aren't in high-res. They all fit within the browser window (as long as my browser window is 1024 wide... that's a bit of a pain btw, it's too wide for my netpad). In fact, if a photographer was stupid enough to allow free access to high res versions of images that he intends to sell on his site, he'd deserve to go out of business. The point is, no-one does that. Photographers, like the OP, display sample pictures that can be viewed in a browser, and typically sell the high res versions in a store format or some other restricted method. Or (as with the OP in this case) they use the site to promote their services.

So the whole "preventing theft by disabling right-click" thing serves only one purpose: to annoy the crap out of some of your site's visitors. It really prevents no theft at all, it's just anoying. It's no different than the DRM measures that have failed miserably in the music and movie industries, and which the RIAA still insists on plaguing us with.

Besides, Alt-PrtScrn is just one example. There's countless ways to get around the stupid "right-click prevention" schemes, even with Flash applications. But in this case, I can gleefully wade through the site, "stealing" all the pictures I want using Alt-PrtScrn as my tool.

(and actually, Alt-PrtScrn doesn't work on my system, I have to use a real screen capture program, I was just using a Windows example)

I love how you call this "stealing" by the way. Taking a part of what's displayed on MY monitor and using it in a perfectly legal manner is not "stealing". I can just as easily cut pictures out of a magazine and use them in a scrapbook. That's not "stealing" either.

[icywarm]

I generally like the page, but I found re-loading the home page took a little too long, but everything else pop'd nicely.

[cb750r]

GoremanX I'm sorry if you think I pee'd in your cornflakes but dude you're pretty positive on most of your other comments, so I take it I offended some principles of yours. I'm a member of this forum to learn and participate, and hopefully help others when I can. You obviously mistake me for some Digital rights Nazi, but if you looked at any of the links on my signature you'd see I'm pretty liberal with the use of my own photos. I've checked out your other posts and I can see your not the typical fight picking forum bully, so lets let this one rest shall we?

[GoremanX]

GoremanX I'm sorry if you think I pee'd in your cornflakes but dude you're pretty positive on most of your other comments, so I take it I offended some principles of yours.

Actually you did, maybe that's why I'm so strong-willed about it I resent when someone makes an automatic assumption that what I intend to do with their copyrighted property is illegal. And to me, that's exactly what the whole right-click-prevention thing is all about. There are already tons of corporate interests out there working to eliminate my rights, and I tend to get a bit miffed (yes, that's the word I choose to use ) when I come across a web site that purposely locks out my right-mouse button. It's like that person thought it was ok to change the functionality of my web browser on MY computer for their own paranoia...

...which I guess makes ME the paranoid one

I've checked out your other posts and I can see your not the typical fight picking forum bully, so lets let this one rest shall we?

Sorry, I rub people the wrong way sometimes with my bluntness