LF Web sites

[Gem Singer]

Thanks Dean,

Those are great websites that show the photographer's work at it's best. I'm sure Scott appreciates that type of "constructive" criticism and will learn how he can improve his website from those examples.

[QT Luong]

Scott, regarding copyright protection on the internet, in my opinion the proper way to do it is to bill the infringers, and in cases of offensive response to take action against them in court. Implementing devices that degrade the experience of viewers is kind of counterproductive. Since every image that I put on the web is registered with the US copyright office, making it possible to potentially recover $150,000 in damages for willingful infringement, I don't think many website owners could afford to tell me to take a hike.

[QT Luong]

Frank, thanks for the feedback, what would you like to see about QT to give more personality to the terragalleria.com site ?

[Frank Petronio]

I don't really know how top describe it in detail, except that the site feels abit impersonal. It is only my opinion, but I think most people who buy art - above a certain price level at least - want to know about the artist and process. And while you cover that in your website, you have a very interesting background and many experiences, and I'd love to read more about your adventures in more of a blog style format.

One thing that might help is to put the running text in a fixed width column (400-500 pixels wide) with text spaced wider (150% leading, via CSS) which many people find easier and faster to read in tests. Having a little white space to relax the eyes is a good thing.

Also, I think you could improve on your logo - terragalliera is an excellent name - and opening pages, so that new viewers can get orientated quicker.

It's hard to tell you exactly what to do because you are already doing so many things well, it feels like nitpicking, but I would experiment - it feels like it is 90% perfect, not 98%...

[Kirk Gittings]

Thanks for all the feedback. This interests me because my son is about to redo my web site around an upcoming book. He is an IT professional with alot of experience and great ideas but not oriented to the "portfolio" needs of an artist like a photographer. I find that to my taste most web sites (including many suggested here) suffer from poor opening page design and come off as simple catalogues of images. I assume these photographers are trying to sell stock, as they show too many images for an effective portfolio. Many appear not to be able to edit their work very well as they mix great images with mediocre ones to show more volume. This weakens the impact of the best images. A portfoilio should be selective rather than inclusive. Fewer of quality is better than more for the sake of more. Only the very best work should be included in a portfolio website. When someone shows interest in ordering a print I email them thumbnails of related images in quantity but I don't want to clutter up the website with them. These are some of the sites of various design vocabularies that I find most to my liking:


http://www.nevadawier.com/

I love the simple elegance of this site though the opening page could be a bit more dynamic:


http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/contents/index.html

This is my favouirte of the ones suggested above:


http://photoarts.com/ftp/volquartz/death/gallery1.html


http://www.uelsmann.net/


http://www.goodmanphoto.com/


http://www.nickbrandt.com/

[Frank Petronio]

What drugs do you think Ulesmann was on when he created that mind-numbing Flash Intro?

[Kirk Gittings]

Well given that he is a product of the 60's, I'd guess a little orange sunshine.

[Darin Cozine]

On a side note, is there any way to click through photos without going forward, so that you only have to hit 'back' once in order to go back to the start/home page?

[Darin Cozine]

... cause that is something that has allways bugged me, you look at 20 photos and then you are like 20 web pages deep in the site.

[Joseph Kayne]

I offer my site for review. My recent project is in Gallery 7 of the Photo Galleries section of my web site at www.josephkaynephoto.com.

Thanks.

Joe.