[dopeytree]

http://www.dopeytree.com

I've done a revamp on my site, it's functioning but at present only has a few pages of photos. I've found people get bored of clicking through page after page so I will add a flash slideshow soon to the from page etc.

What do you all think of it?

Also, I'm going to set up a price list for weddings etc and add that too and was thinking of maybe buying Ed Stone or www.ed-stone-photography.com

what do you think?

[Gooshin]

the photo corners are a bit tacky

your intro page requires a person to scroll almost half of it on "common" monitors, personaly i find pages that have their home page fit on to even 800X600 resolutions and then have the user explore after that.


your top menu buttons are not aligned with anything particular, they are sort of shifted to the left for some reason.

that "mailto:" command at the bottom is gonna cause you lots of grief in the future, read up on ani spam anti-webbots and how to prevent your mailbox from being bombarded with hundreds of daily spam emails.

your "buy my art" image button has that typical blue border around it, i dont know if that was intentional.


your page is validated, which is good, altho it did give me a code for your <iframe> tag, something about some line being obsolete but thats not important.


there

[alohadave]

The link from the Subject Light Print graphic is broken.

Your testimonials are all over the place as far as indenting and line spacings.

Your contacts page is a bit odd as well. You have a picture of a business card, but no way to actually click on it to email you or bring up a contact form. You also have the email link on the bottom of every page the provides the same function.

[user440]

I used to be a web developer and designer in a previous life.

You need to be able to quickly convey what the site is about, to me other than you stating ';Ed Stone Photography' the site does not jump out as a photographer's site to me. The 'shop' section is also a bit confusing. What am I shopping for, am I printing something you shot for me or am I browsing your already developed work? For a photo site, you need 1.) Something that easily conveys what kind of photography you do 2.) A gallery of your work 3.) How to order prints. If one needs more than 1-2 seconds to figure this out, then the message / layout should be reconsidered. To be honest, the tree picture is confusing. Perhaps you can use flash to scroll through examples of your work in varying sections (i.e. weddings, landscapes, nature, etc).

Just my opinion, trying to be helpful.

[dopeytree]

ok looks like my attempt at simple has gone tits up. Show me some examples of sites you think are great (photographers sites!)

In the mean time il make a one page site with a flash slideshow and contact details.


My previous site was fine but to me it was too many pages and I wanted a new design.

The idea behind the writting being unusually aligned is to make you read it a bit like those Chanel 5 ads it creates more of a story, if you give people a page of text all the same size etc it's boring.

Anyways il have a rethink and probably create my own theme in rapidweaver. I am trying to make it iPhone friendly so Ajax instead of flash but slideshows are hard

[dopeytree]

also anyone who has anything to do with photography or design has a display capable of 1024 at the bare minimum most are at 1400 x900 I know that's not the case with normal home users but I'm appealing to a higher proffesional person with my photography

[Gooshin]

also anyone who has anything to do with photography or design has a display capable of 1024 at the bare minimum most are at 1400 x900 I know that's not the case with normal home users but I'm appealing to a higher proffesional person with my photography

*rolleyes* okay good luck buddy.

[Gooshin]

you obviously know what you are doing,

tell me this, what kind of marketing research have you done to find out what type of clients you will have?

who are these "professional clients"

how do you know that these "profesionall clients" have 1400+ resolution monitors?

at home i run 1900 X 1440, but at work 1024X780 is the best i can do, am i no longer cool enough for you?

you asked for criticism now its obvious you dont like what we're telling you, you dont have to justify anything to us, we dont care, we just tell you what we see, take that as you will.

[dopeytree]

you obviously know what you are doing,

tell me this, what kind of marketing research have you done to find out what type of clients you will have?

who are these "professional clients"

how do you know that these "profesionall clients" have 1400+ resolution monitors?

at home i run 1900 X 1440, but at work 1024X780 is the best i can do, am i no longer cool enough for you?

you asked for criticism now its obvious you dont like what we're telling you, you dont have to justify anything to us, we dont care, we just tell you what we see, take that as you will.

So your work would fit my findings of a 1024x780 resolution? yes?

Sorry I didn't mean to sound sound so patronising, i quite often don't explain things properly, it's a bad habit.

Most computers from around 2000 have 1024x780 or higher resolution. I admit there are people who don't even know what this is but these people have probably bought a new computer recently as they will have gotten frustrated with slow speeds etc since 2000 is 8 years ago now. Research I have seen shows most people choose to upgrade their pc/mac or buy a new system every 3/5 years. Meaning the majority of people will be looking at my site and everyone elses on a flat screen with a minimum of 1024 x 780. People with crt can flick between resolutions no problems but generally older ones capped at 1024 x 780 but newer ones go right up to full hd.

But anyway back to the website, i tryed to simplify it by going to basics and using iweb which turns out to be complete crap so i'll go back to rapidweaver and dreamweaver.

Does anyone know any good photography sites?

If I had the money i'd use bigfolio.com but at present its just too expensive as my current setup is £3 a month with godaddy best deal i've seen so far.

Anyway for 18 i think i'm doing pretty well. I've been lucky to have worked with some big names and bands. Had a few magazine publishings etc

My idea is to rebrand myself a bit with a snazzy website and new business cards and try to get some more weddings under my belt and more band work. I have a unique viewpoint when taking my photos but I dont limit myself to weddings etc and this causes problems for a website gallery.

You can see some of my photos of Ed Stone - RedBubble that'll explain the shop bit too.

Thanks fro your comments guys I do appreciate it

[Gooshin]

first thing you have to realize is if you are selling your services or if you are showcasing your works.

making a website that is essentially an elegant photograllery would require a different (for me anyway) approach than creating a website that sells you as a photographer.

some people always want to combine the two but its not necessary.

i'm not sure if this is the same dennis lim thats on this website, but something like this in my opinion is a very efficient and effective website for photography.

Welcome to Dennis Lim Photography

it could be jazzed up a bit (not a fan of the off white) but it works very well, and it fits square into the frame of a typical monitor.


simplicity and efficiency is the new "cool", a brief look at any of the worlds top news websites, or even microsoft will show you that.

[dopeytree]

Thanks for that.

Here are some ideas i've toyed with:

Home

Untitled

This second one is where my logo design came from.

Tom Barnes | +44 (0) 7515 898 999

I guess i'm aiming for something a bit like tom barnes site.

[navcom]

also anyone who has anything to do with photography or design has a display capable of 1024 at the bare minimum most are at 1400 x900 I know that's not the case with normal home users but I'm appealing to a higher proffesional person with my photography

I'm a little confused. Are you saying you are targeting other photographers with your website? Your site appears to be targeting the general public too. I would think you would want to design it for them.

I'd have to agree with Gooshin. The website design stems from the customers you are trying to attract, not from the desire to include the latest technology fad or coolest slideshow on the site.

Just as in photography, simple is better. Say it with as few words and clutter as possible while still getting the point across. The more slideshows that are happening or things blinking or scrolling, the better chance it will lock up the viewers computer or just turn them off waiting for it to load that they will just say forget it.

Design the site to sell and put yourself in your customers shoes. That's my two cents. (and with the American exchange rate, that's not much!)

[navcom]

Thanks for that.

Here are some ideas i've toyed with:

Home

Untitled

This second one is where my logo design came from.

Tom Barnes | +44 (0) 7515 898 999

I guess i'm aiming for something a bit like tom barnes site.

Tom Barnes site has pretty easy navigation and it's obvious right away that he is for sale. The two pages you just linked to appear more like galleries than commercial websites meant to sell. They both took about 3 minutes to load on my computer where Tom's came up in about 10 seconds.

Two more cents.

[Gooshin]

Thanks for that.

Here are some ideas i've toyed with:

Home

that website i didnt even bother waiting to load and just turned it off, like navcom pointed out no one nowdays want to play the waiting game, and i'm sitting on a corporate internet line!

Untitled

this site doesnt even load for me, my at work spam filter (baraccuda, its a small laptop that works at blocking traffic) gives us trouble with some flash applications

so if i was a customer looking at you work, i would have never made it to you.

basic HTML with pages of 10kb of code, or less, are the way to go.

[dopeytree]

So whats a good number of images to showcase if not using some kind of flash slideshow?

I can always just resize and optimize the photos properly so they dont take long to load.

I'm leaning towards a bigfolio.com syle website

something a bit like this?

Cherry Lane