my new website - critical eyes needed

brainwood

brainwood

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I've been planning a website for sometime now but I have, up until now, found it hard to find the time to sit down and commit the time to actually create one. Finally with a few weeks off over Christmas I have applied myself and created my first photography website. I have gone for a simplistic approach both in the graphic design and in the operation of the site. I went for Clicpic as a host and have modified one of their templates to give me pretty much the design I had in my head. Clicpic were even able to offer me a web address as well.


My aim is to achieve some print sales but also to give my work a bit more direction and focus. I have purposely angled the site towards local landscapes as this will hopefully get some local interest going, though my love of the coast has been shoe horned in as well ( well in England 'you are never more than 70 miles from the sea !')
I feel I need to get out and shoot more to build up a larger body of work but all the galleries I have at the moment are work in progress

Most of the work has been or still is here in the RFF Gallery as well but it would be good to get some feedback from some of the wealth of talent here.

checkout the site here
 
I think on the Links page, you left this "Use this section to add links to other sites. This section is optional." in by mistake perhaps from the template. Overall it looks good though, nice and simple.
Maybe the homepage could change a little. *Personally* I'm not a big fan of a single image that you have to scroll down to see, although maybe thats just my browser, or odd taste.

It looks like a good job, can I ask if you had to pay for the hosting or the web address?

PS I don't know if I'd mention I was an editor at the BBC, ppl may think you've got enough money:)
 
I like your website... there is a general harmony of aesthetic that I think will be well received by potential buyers. The only thing that bugged me was the watermarks across the photos... are they really necessary?
 
Thanks for the thoughts Rollingball. I have amended the links page ...oops! You may be right about the BBC, though with such an unusual name my editing clients are likely to find the photography site and I thought it may be odd not to mention it.

Clicpic charged £35 for a year so its very reasonable
 
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If I were a buyer, I would have a hard time telling enough about the photos from the size you have them to want to buy. The photos need to be larger, IMHO.
 
gshybrid. I have to agree about the watermarks. I started off thinking it was good to 'protect my images' but as they are so small anyway I'm not sure its a problem. I may re-upload to remove the mark as it bugs me too.
 
Chris,,

As a user of a Clikpic site myself I'm a bit biased - I like their simplicity and believe that they leave the photos to take centre stage rather than lots of gizmos and gadgets that you see on some sites.

I like your work, particularly the canal series which I have followed as you have posted them here on RFF.

The only thing I am uncertain about is the white background. I know that some people like them and I have thought about trying it on my own site, but I have never had the courage. I think it is a bit too stark, but maybe that's just me.

Good job though, good luck with the print sales.
 
One more vote to remove watermark. The big writing across the photo is distracting and an immediate turn-off, at least for me.
 
Picket Wilson. I here what you're saying but I think this the largest file Clicpic will take, I will look into this though as it would be better to have larger shots
 
ChrisWaldren. thanks for your kind comments. I must admit I like the hard stark quality of the white background particularly with the monochrome images

Chris
 
Remove the watermark, increase risk of theft, up to you. Does not bother me that much but then I am used to looking at the Magnum site. However, the picture of the camera at the top is really tacky and distracting in my opinion. I'd get rid of it. The white background works well, IMO.
 
Looks good but I have a large screen. Fact is that in excess of 60% of people have small screens. Most people run laptops (not desktops) and screen resolution tends to be 1024x768 or 1280x800. Either way, 25% of people are running 1024x768 or less which is a plenty big enough chunk to have to use that as the lowest common denominator. But even then the story is not complete. With the browser itself taking maybe 150 pixels of that 768 height and the fact people have several toolbars installed in their browser, the resulting window height is very often 500 pixels and sometimes less. I know this for fact because I have monitoring software installed in several UK sites I run for people.

So the ideal window height is around 500 pixels if you want your images to be fully visible without scrolling for nearly all visitors.

Photographers tend to go for much bigger screens which you need for image editing. But then you get used to big on screen images and tend to want that in your website. RESIST the temptation.

So I would recommend making your header much much smaller. You don't need to shout your name at people from every page.

Clikpic is good and a bargain for what they provide. You are well on track but just need to make the framework smaller IMO.

Not for critique and I don't want to steal your thunder but I'm just revamping my old site which you can see here. Images look awful because they've been resized many times over whilst determining optimum sizes. But as an example of sizing I think you will get the point that it will just work really well on smaller screenss as well as bigger monitors. Image sites just don't work well if you need to scroll except in blog type sites with plenty text and small enough images which can be seen in full whilst scrolling through a page of text.

I would only use bigger images if targetting other photographers or picture editors who mostly have bigger monitors.

And lose the watermarks.
 
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Nice web site with some great images

I don't like the water mark at all especially in that position but i understand why you have it.

Images need to be bigger, or i should be able to click on them to make them full screen

Camera in the top right corner is distracting and out of focus ... or is it my eyes

The very best of luck to you :)
 
I like the clean simple lines of the site. The white b/g works as long as you don't use borderless photos, in my opinion: compare the Bluebells photo (without border) to the Autumn Beech Tree which follows it, which has a small black border. The border works. The Bluebells photo looks a little washed out without it.

I'm in favour of some sort of copyright mark on the photos due to frequent reports of IP theft - but I agree that the big diagonal watermark is too much. What about a small one in the lower RH corner set to, say, 33% transparency.

Agree with making the header smaller, and also removing the camera image - it takes attention away from the prints, which is what you want people to look at.

Always liked your work - good luck!
 
Thanks for the encouragement Lynn. Still very much undecided about using a watermark, I'm tempted not to but I need to way up the dangers. I have reduced the header somewhat but I quite like the camera motif in a digital dominated world as it singles it out a bit ... well thats the hope anyway.

Chris
 
In general I would say the webpage looks really good. It is clean and easy to navigate. I am one of those who would remove the watermarks. The white background - well - it works well for the menu and is OK for the images. Changing it to gray or similar would probably involve lot of changes to the whole design and it is, after all, a matter of taste (so feel free to keep it :) )
I find your images really nice (they definitely deserve to be presented).

I would say - great looking webpage given the fact that it is your first.

EDIT: I would make the camera a bit more transparent or simply less dominant (maybe smaller)
 
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brainwood said:
I quite like the camera motif in a digital dominated world as it singles it out a bit ... well thats the hope anyway.

Chris
Click to expand...

Believe, me no one cares about that, no one will assume your photos are not digital because you put a quaint old camera up there. People care only about the quality of the images. The camera is a visual distraction, as others have said, and to be blunt, the camera image smacks of amateurism, though you may not agree or care about that. Just my opinion.
 
Another solution for the watermark is to increase the canvas size (put a border around your prints) and put a discreet copyright notice on the border. With your white b/g maybe something like a white border surrounded by a thin black line outer border. You might need to do something like a subtle drop shadow around the image to differentiate it from the white border - something like this:
U27021I1294498308.SEQ.0.jpg


But maybe that all ends up looking too fussy and will detract from the clean simplicity of your site's design.

I take your point about the film camera motif. What does the header look like if you make the camera a bit smaller and maybe aligned with the RH side of the page?

I'm hoping to go through the same process myself soon. Your experience is helpful to me.

kind regards,
 
Matus. Thanks for your thoughts , appreciate you're input

Pablito. I hear what your saying but I still like the image . I have reduced in size both the name and camera image which helps set it back a bit.
 
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