New website - 135street.com

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pcardigo

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Nov 2, 2010
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Hello,

I've just started with a friend a new website (www.135street.com), which is centered around street photography (specially with Leica). It will be a mix of site/blog/magazine.

It will have:

- News
- Reviews
- Articles
- Interviews with photographers
- a space for new talented street photographer

It began last week, and I already have some posts online, including 2 lens reviews (35/2.5 Color Skopar and 50mm Summicron).

I would like to have your opinion, since we are doing this for all of us :).

I hope you like it!

Pedro Cardigo
......................................
www.135street.com
www.pedrocardigo.com
 
Lose the "35mm street photography" space. Dead space. The drop down menu system on the top bar is so tacky. I'd stick with the sidebar.

Contact page has a comment form too? Lose that comment form.
 
I liked it. Cosmetic things are not important for me. Color skopar review and photos are very nice. Congratulations and good luck with your new site.
 
Great start. Good reviews and photos. Play with the cosmetics - focus the design around the content and you'll be OK. Too much dead pace? Maybe a bit. Drop downs vs. sidebar navigation? To me, the more access points the better.

Main thing is to keep adding content. I've got it bookmarked, and hope to see new stuff as I check back from time to time.
 
Since this is theme based, you should be able to make the header smaller (i agree with that recommendation). Nav is fine for me, don't find it tacky. For me, the site looks like a lot of templates out there. Content is king, but there isn't much to differentiate this site from the thousands of other wordpress sites out there. Maybe killing the header to 75 - 100 pixels in height would bring the article slider up more and be more captivating.

It's a niche site so it could go great or you might need to broaden your horizons. Good on ya for giving it a go though and best of luck!
 
Ahem, I don't know how many times I've said this but here it is again.
Your average user uses a laptop these days. A quick check on one of my sites show 16% of people using screen width of 1024 pixels or less. And just as importantly 52% of users using a screen height of 800 pixels or less. By the time you take off what the browser users and considering many people have two or three addon bars in their browser and you end up with roughly availble window size of 1024 x 550 pixels at most. That represents the max screen availble for a lot of users. Your site looks crap in a window of that size. Left right right scroll bars showing. Header much too big. Image size so big that if you carefully scroll to see most of it you can't see menu items or image nav buttons. Not too clever unless you don't give a stuff about the average user.
 
The header on the site takes up a bit too much vertical space, including the space for the menus. I'd try to half that height, you'll appreciate it when you want to add in some advertising.
 
I think your content is great ! Regarding layout ( which I realize you are tweaking ), from my perspective it's fine. Looks good on an iPad, should be similar experience on a laptop.

I will look forward to seeing where you take this. Really enjoyed your review of the noctilux!

Randy
 
Steve Ash said:
I would not consider Steve McCurry a streetphotographer at all.

Regards
Steve
Click to expand...

You are right about that, but sometimes I will "broaden the spectrum" a bit...:)

And I guess Steve McCurry deserves it, besides the fact that where Steve normally shoots there are no streets... not "our streets" anyway.

All the best!

Pedro Cardigo
..........................
www.135street.com
www.pedrocardigo.com
 
Heres my take: I can already see a lot of passion in this idea. I really enjoyed poking around what you have up so far.

Other members have raised some excellent points with regards to technical issues with the website. I personally haven't started a website because websdesign is certainly not my strong point. If and when I do it, I will pay someone to translate my ideas to the screen. I will also take into account the technical suggestions that they gave you.

Content: I have a clearer idea about this side of the equation. I guess you will always have to balance the main thrust of the website - in other words do you want to concentrate on 'gear' like in your review and article sections, or do you want to concentrate on 'street work' with great photos, technique and interviews with masters and up and coming street photographers.

The reason that I bring this point up is that just about any successful photographer that you meet would eventually want his students to focus on the process, ideas and imagery and move away from 'gear talk'. So, there is the inherentt risk of your website being tagged as a gear forum, instead of a place where street photographers can congregate and discuss their visual process and how this translates into images.

And as Steve Ash said, Steve McCurry would not be labelled as a street photographer, although he does have some street work in his portfolio. He descends from that Nat Geo tradition of taking colorful photos in exotic places, well exotic from the stand point of the typical 'westerner', who incidentally is your target market for this website. So, in my definition of street, it encompasses the banal daily movements outside your doorstep, or your hometown/city. It doesn't involve spending thousands of dollars to travel to war torn countries in search of the exotic. Because that in a way is cheating as the exotic is already an inherent part of the genetic makeup from images from this part of the world.

So, at the risk of sounding controversial, I would can that Steve McCurry portfolio in the masters section of street work, because this is definetely out of kilter with the rest of the website. There are a lot of great street photographers in the world now with very strong opinions about the exotic locale of photos versus the banal everyday. I am pretty sure that you would be alienating a huge slice of your audience by keeping him in that section. Besides, there are a ton of photographers who would fall under that banner of street way ahead of McCurry. Your inclusion of Winogrand was a good but obvious choice.

So, there are a other street photographers that I would include instead of McCurry. Here are four that I would include for starters: Richard Kalvar and Joel Myerowitz, William Klein, Lee Freidlander.

Anyway, these are just some of my opinions regarding content. All the best!
 
Many websites doing these reviews & featuring famous photogs in English. Is the Portuguese RF market sufficient to make such effort worthwhile?

Also, you write that the 50 Cron is the sharpest. I believe this title belongs to the 50 Summilux ASPH (APO). Good luck -
 
pcardigo said:
I would like to have your opinion, since we are doing this for all of us :).
Click to expand...

This sounds like you don't have any commercial intentions. But I suppose that some rff folks here looked at the site from a commercial point of view.
Is this site just a personal project?
 
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