First, let me just say that I really like your work and your other website does a better job featuring it. Your photo's are more prominently displayed and in a much faster fashion. It's blog like, so I'm not bothered by the navigation as it is, but if you made any adjustments to this site, I'd place some persistent nav along the top.
Now as for the new site, the footprint of your flash animation is large enough that for most folks with a max display size of 1024x768, the main navigation is below the fold. So aside from clicking each image in the animation, they may not see more to your site.
I'm a huge fan of presenting your navigation up front and keeping it consistent throughout the site. I'm also a fan of flash, but not at the expense of A) losing persistent navigation below the fold and B) slowing down the user's experience unnecessarily.
I'm also a bit bothered by the right-side navigation - I kinda expect the 'Archives' list to be below the 'Galleries' list.