question about my website

[Patricia Langer]

This is my first website and I need some input about this -- my friend tells me that I don't have good blacks in the
landscape and Greece portfolios but they are fine in the portraits section. On my monitor they seem fine. So -- how do the backs look to you on your monitor?
I didn't do this website myself, so assume computer illiteracy on my part.
Thank you for your help. The site is www.patricialanger.com
By the way, the landscapes are 4x5, most of the portraits are 4x5, one 8x10, but Greece is 35 mm from panorama
insert in a Mamiya 7 (it's my fantasy 7x17).
Patricia

[Leonard Evens]

It all looks fine on my monitor.

My only comment is that there appears to be a very slight greenish cast. It may be something associated with using the Flashplayer to show the pictures.

Great pictures, by the way.

[Ken Lee]

They look fine. I think men1.jpg is really nice.

You might want to invest in a monitor calibration tool. That way, you'll know. Otherwise, it's just a complete guess.

Since you are using the site to promote your work, you want to feel confident that all the effort you have spent, is not spoiled by any omission on your part.



Gretag McBeth Eye-One (http://www.gretagmacbeth.com/index/products/products_color-mgmt-spec/products_cm-for-creatives/products_eye-one-display.htm?" target="_blank) is very nice.

[Oren Grad]

OK on mine.

The little frame-wipes when each picture loads are irritating, but that's another matter. Congratulations on getting the site up, and good luck with it...

[Frank Petronio]

The photos look fine on a Mac monitor. Often PCs are darker and have a shorter range, so you have to find a compromise. It helps if you use Photoshop's "Save for Web" command (or Imageready) with the ICC Profile box unchecked so that no profile is associated with the image.

As for the Flash interface, it is a pretty effect but tedious for most viewers.

[Patricia Langer]

Thanks for the input. I'm glad theblacks are fine. What is it about a flash interface that is tedious? I'm too close to the forest to be particulary discerning.

[Doug Dolde]

I'd recommend you give the images more meaningful names than xxx1, xxx2, etc. Also would like it better without a pop up window.

[robc]

any answer to a question such as this is impossible to evaluate accurately. Everyones monitor will be different. All you can do is to aim for the middle of the side of a barn and hope the reproduction on some peoples monitor will be somewhere near to what you intended.

The problem is now doubly difficult because many people now have LCD monitors which are capable of much greater brightness than CRT's and some newer LCD's can be very very bright. So now you have two or three barns to aim at.

So which barn are you aiming at and which type of barn does your friend have? Is your monitor calibrated? Is your friends monitor calibrated. Are you both using the same calibration standard? Have you seen the images on your freinds monitor and what did you think they looked like? How do you know whether my or anyone elses monitor is set at a reasonable level of brightness and contrast?

On my monitor the blacks look a little too dark but putting my monitor into "super bright mode" (designed for video playback) I see there is lots of detail in those blacks. But then I have not calibrated my monitor accurately but other web sites look fine.

I liked the site and the images.

p.s. Ignore any tripe you hear about Flash making images look green... your image landscape_5.jpg has greys which are set with approximately 15 points less blue than red and green. In my book that makes it warm towards yellow (maybe slightly too much but thats down to personal taste) and has nothing to do with Flash.

[dan nguyen]

All looks fine on my Mac. On monitor#1 (CRT, LaCie) black is black. On my monitor#2 (a cheap CRT, GEM), black is a deep dark grey but still looks nice. Very nice photos.

[jonathan smith]

Great photos.

I like the dissolving slide show on the home page. For the others, at first I didn't like the wiping as it loads. However, it IS good to see loading progress happening so I would keep it. I was getting used to it. If you could make a loading bar instead of using the picture frame I might do that, but I don't know what's possible. The dissolving right at the end is fine.

I do like the pop up window because you can go back and forth without waiting, and if you accidentally close the browser, you're not completely lost.

I think numbers are better than names because it's hard to keep coming up with good names, and if people start ordering copies they will get names mixed up. Eventually you'll have hundreds of images. It's easier to order the #3 than to order the "Super Slam Veggie Lovers Special" (which can get confused with the "Super Slam Liver Lover's Special" or the "Grand Slam Pickle Lover's Special")

[Ron Marshall]

My monitor has been profiled with a spyder and they look great.

[paulr]

On my profiled monitor the images look great too.

I agree that the flash effects (the way the pics load, etc.) are annoying ... but i have less patience for this stuff than a lot of people. Other that that the site looks elegant.

[Ken Lee]

As a user, the thing which I like best about surfing and shopping, is that I can jump around at my own whim.

In this regard, I find Macromedia Flash annoying, because it takes control away from the user, and often introduces delays.

Once I sense that the web site is trying to impose an agenda of its own, I usually leave.

Perhaps web designers, like architects, are paid commensurate with the complexity of the project - and are thus incented towards bells and whistles.

Give me straight HTML any day.

[dan nguyen]

my 2 cents about Flash.. Flash is more appropriate for commercial use and it's over abused.. I think for a photographer site, it's best not having Flash or any kind of animation, pop-up window to show larger image is nice...

[John_4185]

Include a grey (gray) scale so that people can calibrate their monitors. Most people don't ever tune their screens.

They look fine on my LCD monitor.

[Patricia Langer]

I'm back from the gym now, and here's where I'm tentatively leaning... jury's still out. I think I will dump the flash thing, keep the pop up window ( I like that), not sure about titles ( mine are pretty simple anyway), and the loading issue is new. It wasn't happening when I previewed the site. There was just a pleasant dissolve in. Hmm.
And thanks for saying you liked my pictures. Much appreciated.

[Erik Gould]

Nothing wrong with Flash as a plug in, it gets used alot more than most people think, its just how you are using it here that is the trouble, I think. The wipe with the white flash between images is very distracting. You can have any kind of transition, or none at all if you want. There are many portfolio sites that use Flash to great advantage. The images look good to me BTW.

[Ken Lee]

While we're on the subject, perhaps people would like to share the URL's of some similar sites, which they regard as particularly tasteful and effective.



Here is one (http://www.carolfreemanphotography.com" target="_blank) where I like the colors and overall layout. While it doesn't appear to use Flash, it has some JavaScript for giving that "slide-show" look which I personally find annoying. (I have no affiliation with the photographer in question: she is a friend of a friend).

[Patricia Langer]

I thought Flash was the slideshow on the home page, but it sounds like it is the transition from picture to picture in the portfolios. Is that accurate? I want to be using the correct language so I can understand the changes you are suggesting.

[Ken Lee]

Flash refers to the Macromedia Flash Player (http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/flashpro" target="_blank), a way of delivering "rich content" embedded in a web page. It is a programming environment unto itself.

For a good example of how much can be done with Flash, see www.comcast.net (http://www.comcast.net" target="_blank). As you can see, it is highly interactive and allows all kinds of features. However, you need a Flash programmer to write your applications.

[robc]

if you right click on any part of your web site the context menu will tell you what that part is written in. If you see play, rewind etc then it is flash. The slideshow on the hompage is flash. The portfolios are also flash. Falsh is contained within Html so some bits are html but its mostly flash.

The images are not embedded in flash but are dynamically loaded into flash at run time.

There is nothing wrong with flash but personally I don't think that the popups for the portfolios are a good idea. They are not actually necessary as the porfolios could replace the home page when they are loaded and closing a portfolio could reload the home page, which since it will be in the cache will happen instantly unless the entry page is one of the portfolios.

However, since, the html has been written using framesets, it is possible that the entry page may not display as intended because of the way search engines index pages. This brings us onto the fact that one of the search engines criteria for position is based on text relavancy. They have no clue about how your site looks. There is no meaningful text about your portfolios. Also, Flash hides text from search engines. So if search engine position is important to you, then the text should not be in Flash and the site should not be written using framesets. On the other hand, if search engine position is not important to you then there is no problem with flash and framesets but I would still get rid of the popups.

[Brian Ellis]

On my CRT monitor your friend is right, the ones I looked at are too dark. Not drastically so, you can still appreciate the photographs, but they could stand to be about 10%-15% brighter. However, my monitor is calibrated (Spyder II) and calibration dimmed the monitor from it's out-of-the-box brightness. Monitors vary so much that I think it's impossible to have a web site that looks good on all of them.

[Gregory Gomez]

Hi Patricia!

Here is my feedback:

1. Excellent images.

2. Slick and cool web-site look and feel and execution.

3. Image quality relatively high on my 23-inch Macintosh monitor.

4. On my budget Nokia monitor, the images of Greece seem to lack impact and do not have deep blacks.

It's my assessment that the monitor being used to view your web site will have a considerable influence over the quality of the images seen by your Internet audience. No website I have every seen can do justice to a black and white print.

Keep up the good work.

By the way, how much did it cost to have your web site developed? I'm curious; one day I hope to have my own web site if I can afford it. Thanks.

[Patricia Langer]

Gregory, my website was designed by Tony Makepeace in Toronto. He is very reasonable and if you are interested in contacting him let me know and I will give you his email address. I'm glad you enjoyed my pictures.