Critique my web page?

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squirrel$$$bandit

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I actually paid money for Sean McCormack's "LRB Portfolio" plugin for Lightroom...it's a pretty versatile web gallery (with a few weaknesses), and I used it to make a new page for myself:

www.jrobertlennon.com/photography

I think I like it, though it may look weird on other computers. The menu font is a compromise--I wanted the words to be in my own handwriting, like the title graphic, but I need to do that make-your-own-font thing...maybe I'll get to it later today. [edit: I did manage this another way, see below...]

I'm thinking I'm going to start applying for group shows and wanted to have a nice web page for people to go to.

Whaddya think?
 
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Cool site,
not into the side scrolling, but if thats your thing...go for it.

Todd
 
Loved the Overall Feel & Concept
Opening Page Lovely -
Do like the Two Color Shots w/ B&W in Middle / Cool Font
Simple & Easy to Navigate...Upbeat Site :)

I'm just NOT sure about mixing B&W and Color photos together in each set (perhaps they Lose their Impact)
maybe B&W First then followed by Color series

Overall Well Done !

Best- H
 
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I quite like the scrolling system, I hate having to wait for Flash to load.
My only suggestion would be to reduce the menu option font size as they're a bit big at the moment, once that's done I'd align the 'H' of Home to the 'J' of JRobert and the 'S' of Things aligns with they 'Y' of Photography. Or alternatively you could spread the options across the width of the whole page.

I'd also have Contact as your last option of the list, but these are all picky and subjective, other than that the content (which is the important bit) is great - so congratulations!
 
Thanks!

OK, I manually replaced the menu with actual jpegs of my handwriting. I'm gonna try to hack the template so I don't have to do it in wordpad every time I update...anyway, clear your cache and check it out again if you have a sec...

Regarding color and B&W...I debated this with myself for about an hour...I considered just having two galleries, one B&W and one color...but I like this solution for now. I dunno, though, it's hard to find a reasonable and simultaneously visually appealing solution to this dilemma...
 
The problem with custom fonts is that people don't have them loaded, or will not load them on their PCs in order to see the things the way you want them to.

But anyway, I do like the fact that you don't try to obscure your content with needless whizbang such as flash and the like. It's straightforward, except for the horizontal scroll as others have noted.

The one thing I would prefer would be at least the option of a more standard thumbnail overview, as opposed to having the whole gallery load at once. Also, 400 px high seems just a wee bit small. Are you maybe trying to compromise between thumbnails and full size images?
 
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dmr said:
The one thing I would prefer would be at least the option of a more standard thumbnail overview, as opposed to having the whole gallery load at once. Also, 400 px high seems just a wee bit small. Are you maybe trying to compromise between thumbnails and full size images?
Click to expand...

Yes, that was my aim. I also wanted the photos to be able to show up without vertical scrolling for anyone who's on a widescreen laptop with a 768-pixel-high screen.

I suppose I want people to get an idea of what my stuff is like without giving anyone the opportunity to "borrow" the images...if I had big jpegs I'd feel compelled to add copyright watermarks, and I hate the way those look...

BTW, Sean McCormack replied in great detail to my questions almost immediately. He told me how to hack the template and add my own menu buttons...a very helpful, smart guy, so props to him. I should also add how fantastic a tool I've been finding Lightroom...for the serious amateur photographer, it's just about the perfect app.
 
Very nice website overall.

I like the side-scrolling galleries, it is something I've been considering for my website.
The white and grey works very nicely in my opinion (I have also been thinking of putting my site on white, it is going to look like I am copying your website).

However, whilst I like the font on the logo, on the menu it looks a bit... scruffy.
If there were some way to change the scroll bar style, that would probably improve the overall look of the site, as it doesn't really fit with the overall layout.

However, those are small things, but the scroll bar does distract me every time I look at it. Overall though, a very nice and sleek website.
 
sweathog said:
If there were some way to change the scroll bar style, that would probably improve the overall look of the site, as it doesn't really fit with the overall layout.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I agree. The user's manual has links to examples of sites that use the scrolling, but several of them have obviously changed to a flash-based scroll system, and I assumed the template would provide that. It didn't. I may try and lift the code from somebody else's site though...or not...didn't I just say I didn't want flash? I guess I do, if it's simple, works well and doesn't take a long time to load.
 
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1. Hate the side scrolling... drives me mad.
2. LOVE the bike/night shot on 'Places'. Fantastic.
3. I use the iWeb nonsense (link below). I quite like it...
 
Well...my dirty secret...I LIKE the side scrolling. That's why I bought the thing. Everyone's other comments are very useful though. I think I may try to de-scruffy the menu items and change the order, once i've time...

g12, glad you like the bike shot! That's the M2 with Canon 50/1.2. I checked out your page and really like what you've been doing with the M8 and CV lenses. Are you doing a lot of post-processing? They're evocatively lo-fi...
 
My thoughts.

1) Black text on the grey background can be hard to read.
2) Side scrolling is ok as is, but if you are going to continue to add to these galleries, the pages will get large and slow to load very quickly. Images seem to be a large filesize for thier pixel count, and that will only make the loading issue get worse as they grow, so add a bit of jpg compression to them to take the edge off.
 
Sjixxxy said:
My thoughts.

1) Black text on the grey background can be hard to read.
2) Side scrolling is ok as is, but if you are going to continue to add to these galleries, the pages will get large and slow to load very quickly. Images seem to be a large filesize for thier pixel count, and that will only make the loading issue get worse as they grow, so add a bit of jpg compression to them to take the edge off.
Click to expand...

1) I agree. Gonna do something about that, thanks!
2) I'm stopping there...I will just replace these photos every now and then. Who wants to look at more than 30 really? It seems like it might already be overkill...
 
That doll image is really creepy! And I quite like the second one in 'places'- right up my alley. The balloons too.

I don't mind the side scrolling at all- it is easy to look at them this way, and aside from a little bit of centering from time to time simple. I think you'd have to render the font as an image file? I believe this is right. I've got someone working on a site for me and we discussed using the font from my book but didn't.
 
sepiareverb said:
I think you'd have to render the font as an image file? I believe this is right. I've got someone working on a site for me and we discussed using the font from my book but didn't.
Click to expand...

I just wrote stuff with a sharpie, scanned it, then chopped it up into individual jpegs! The more I think about it though the more I think I'm going to do it over later this week...the menu handwriting is less clear than the title handwriting, and it's slanted...
 
mabelsound said:
g12, glad you like the bike shot! That's the M2 with Canon 50/1.2. I checked out your page and really like what you've been doing with the M8 and CV lenses. Are you doing a lot of post-processing? They're evocatively lo-fi...
Click to expand...

Lots of messing with Aperture and Silver Efex Pro... :)
 
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