My Redesigned Web Site is Up

[Walter Calahan]

Hi everyone.

Spent the last 6 months thinking about how my web site should be redesigned.

The last two weeks were spent scanning and coding.

http://www.walterpcalahan.com/Cheers/Home.html

Enjoy.

[Collin Orthner]

Congratulations Walter. I really enjoyed the "Carroll County" portfolio. It's all good work.

[Asher Kelman]

Hi everyone.

Spent the last 6 months thinking about how my web site should be redesigned.

The last two weeks were spent scanning and coding.

So enjoyable, cleanly designed and the interface works!

The text and graphics for Photography is perfect in that it shows a gray tonality that brings out the real nature of photography itself by painting behind it with subtle tones.

I'll return later after going through more. but I already have gone through all the portraits and am impressed by the original style of your work.

Musing I gather is not ready!

Asher

[Robert Fisher]

Outstanding work Walter! Congratulations.

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Walter,

Just returned from the bull riding! Good thing there are guys available to distract the bull when the guy is thrown! You might remove a few that you only might give 1 * to. Not all are as good as the best.

My photographic philosophy is rooted in my Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications educat is incomplete and should not be underlined as it departs from the nice graphic interface!

Asher

[Greg Lockrey]

Just a minor issue for me so don't get mad, but I'd drop the drop shadow on the "Photography" or add it along with Walter P. Calahan.... either/ or. The drop shadow pulls my eye away from your name. I like the color, font and size of the wording and your name could have that bevel and emboss look of "Photography" too but I would take it easy on the drop shadow effect. You might try PHOTOGRAPHY in all caps with the smaller font as you have also. Over all a very nice site. (I liked Graphic Design when I was in school. )

[Frank Petronio]

I don't know how you can photograph those politicians (Marion Barry!?) without wanting to club them with your tripod. But you do a great job with their photos. What drugs do you use?

Overall I like the site. I wish the photos were larger because they are good photos.

It is really nice to find a photographer's site that actually has photo captions -- most of the commercial corporate guys don't, at least on the Flash sites they tend to use.

There is a lot of web geekery in the code and layout that I don't care for but it will work fine for 98% of your audience... and there are a lot of little details that you could work on -- for example, having your name in the title of every page, so that when someone bookmarks a blog posting they can find it later as "Walter P. C > title of post" and not just some obscure post's oddball title in their list of bookmarks. That's a petty detail as an example, but there a bunch of them (in large part thanks to iWeb) and they add up over time.

And yeah I'd be proud of Newhouse too but I think you give that link too much importance. It's a website for YOU not them. Keep a link but downplay it a notch.

Now that there is a Google map to your house we're going to meet up there -- all 1800 LF forum participants -- next Friday for BBQ. Seriously, you may get some random people and sales-types showing up at your door... I have. It is awkward.

I suspect the green looks garish on an uncalibrated PC...

The woman in the cowboy hat on the home page looks washed out and isn't close to being one of your best portraits. Put a killer knock out portrait up on the home page....

Like one of Marion effing Barry!

(The one of Robert Rubin is amazing!!!)

That's my first impression.

[Asher Kelman]

Re The soft shadow behind Photography, I like it since it says in one word and shows what you are doing. You might get a graphic designer to work on that concept! If not keep it!

Ir works since the rest of the page is simple. One can afford one fussy spot and this is it and it works well!

Asher

[Greg Lockrey]

Re The soft shadow behind Photography, I like it since it says in one word and shows what you are doing. You might get a graphic designer to work on that concept! If not keep it!

Ir works since the rest of the page is simple. One can afford one fussy spot and this is it and it works well!

Asher

The titles have a nice clean line to them (you are fortunate to have a name that looks good in print) but the "photography" looks like it was trying to be erased and corrected on the erasure marks. My $.02

[Walter Calahan]

Thanks for the good words and feedback.

Regarding the underlined link on my Projects page. I wasn't happy with the design solution either. I didn't want the whole think underlined, but when I made one work the hot link to the Newhouse School, the entire line got crunched in Firefox. The solution so the link would work in Firefox was to make the entire think a hot link.

I'm hoping Firefox 3 works better with web sites designed with Apple's iWeb. We'll see later this month when it comes out.

I continue to shoot the Bull Riders. It's an on going project. The season starts this Saturday. As I get better images, they'll get posted.

As with everything in life, there are some design compromises in this new site design. They will be fixed as I can. My wife is an award winning professional graphic designer for the Washington Post. I took one graphics course in college because it was required of all photo majors. What can I say, the shoemaker's children never have shoes. Grin. All she told me was to add a little spacing here and there.

Again, thanks for the feedback. I like the BBQ idea. We don't have parking for 1800 people. Perhaps you all can car pool. Grin.