No Flash. Please. I looked at the sites rob linked and found them all fussy to the point of distraction. Any site that forces me to sit through a tedious animation before I can get to what I wanted to see is a huge turn-off for me. Martin's design principles are much more to my taste.
Opinions are like ____ and everyone has one. The Flash sites can be beautiful but they operate under the assumption that the viewer has a fast connection, up to date software and platform, and that they are willing to spend a few minutes exploring and experimenting with the website. I prefer to let people know what's going on quicker than that and I don't want to penalize people that don't know their way around the latest technology. But that's a trade off. An advertising photographer trying to appeal to a coke-addled Eurotrash 24-year art director at Saatchi & Saatchi isn't the same audience as the 70-year old Fortune 500 retiree who buys large format Lightjets of sunsets over Mt. Hood. In the later case Flash and a Gameboy interface may be appropriate, but certainly not for all people.
I also like the idea of updating the website much more frequently, giving repeat visitors a reason to come back. If all you need is a gallery, Photoshop has several attractive canned ones in their automated menu. They're better than 99% of the amateur and 90% of the professional attempts I see.
My photo and business websites.
Deciding to have a website, talking to a number of people, making the mistake of depending on people who didn't follow through, and deciding what to do next, took 2 years, and taught me quite a lot about this process, I had the choice of someone helping me and waiting for their schedule to allow that/for whenever they decided to get around to it, or hiring a professional web design out, which I shopped around for. I've been quoted up to $15,000 for what I wanted(then they woke up!!!).
I didn't want gratuitous effects, just effects to make the website flow seamlessly, that and no more, and music, the greatest movies ever made had music, so I didn't care about the 'purist' attitude regarding images w/o music, I just don't care, and since I play music while checking out various websites, 'why not?'.
So for 3 yrs. while I'm deciding on how I'm going to go about this, I'm compiling and tweaking images, and playing around with graphics, and comparing images that seem to go together w/my other images, the basic page layout of my website began to take form, and I began to assemble the parts, but still didn't quite have the tecnical 'knowhow' to link all this together the right way w/music.
What was frustrating was that these web programs are awkward and just not as seamless(at least to me) as Photoshop, but I kept probing, and playing around with all this,.......................following the advice of a fine photographer named Paul Schiliger, I basically laid out my pages in Photoshop and did most of the work in that image editing program, and I finally had a couple of lights go on w/my understanding regarding some of the vague instructions that come along w/some of these programs, and I decided to just do it myself.
I made a decision considering my stage in life, and the fact that I'd been five years wanting a website/working/tinkering around w/my images/the page layout, that I would do a minimalist non-flash website w absolutely no ornament, ...............................I ended up w/a black backround, 6 words, and three lines, and no music(because I wouldn't be able to do the music the way I wanted w/o flash), and I kept refining, cleaning up typos, tweaking, and culling images that didn't get along w/each other, and to do a flash site after learning what I needed to know if still chose to do a fancier site later .......................I'm glad it took all this time, and that praise it or condemn it, I did it, and I'm ultimately more satisfied by that, than I would've been if I'd had someone else helping me/somebody else do it. I know this for a FACT, NOBODY will have the time/inclination to give your the site the time and effort to polish up your site to the N th degree like you will.
It's been 5 years since I thought,...............'I'd like a website of my images',....................................................... it's worked out exactly the way I wanted it to, even though I didn't know this through all these detours, so try your best to learn how to do it yourself, then it will be your vision.
www.imageandartifact.bz
flash is just as capable of being written as an updatable content managed system as an off the shelf piece of blogging software with a suitable template is.
http://www.mskgent.be
corrected link
www.mskgent.be
My son is a professional web site designer for a big company. I have been trying to get him to redesign my website. I have been waiting two years. I just want something simple and elegant. Here is the site he did for his company. Do you think he is able to do something simple and elegant anymore?
www.xyleminteractive.com
Thanks,
Kirk
at age 73:
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep"
Damn, I never got around to downloading Flash 8 and now I'll never be able to take advantage of the incredible advances in interactivity since Flash 7. Nice simple error page though.
I use Freeway Express for Mac. Very simple and very easy to learn. The software can be expanded if you find you want to ad features.
For design, I also keep it as simple as I can. Some of the sites I visit I consider extremely busy. Some people have made their website about website design, and not about the photographs.
www.flavellphotography.com
"I meant what I said, not what you heard"--Jflavell
first rule of software release is don't release software unless you know it'll run on your user base machines. i.e. he shouldn't have made it compatible with only the latest generation flash player.
Should always allow a couple of generations backward compatibility unless you want to lose business.
I have download of activex modules switched off(big security hole closed, especially spyware) so site won't run for me anyway. I'll never know what it looked like.
Just about everyone I know thinks that I'm going to write them a web page for nothing. Make him a reasonable offer and maybe he'll do it.
Do you think he is able to do something simple and elegant anymore?
Nope........maybe that is why you have been waiting two years.... :-)
PS. Interesting site, but I still have no idea what it was all about... :-)
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