My new website

[Merg Ross]

My website is now finished and on line thanks to my daughter. We wanted to keep it as simple as possible with emphasis on the images, not as a marketing tool. Please take a look, we welcome suggestions for improvement.

http://mergross.com/

[Nate Battles]

Nice site Merg! It's very easy to navigate. I like it.

[Kirk Gittings]

As I expected, great work and well presented. You should be happy.

[Ted Harris]

Merg,

Very nice. Clean, simple, well presented.

[Marko]

Great images, Merg!

I had to look again to notice the site and I have a few remarks and suggestions:

1. This is a matter of taste, but I would eliminate the gap between the menu and the main content area. Nothing critical, but it does distract a little.

2. The margins around "exhibits/collections" page header are different - much larger than on the rest of the pages. Again, not a show stopper, just a matter of consistency.

3. Ditto for Portfolio One.

Speaking of Portfolios, the next two are the most serious remarks:

4. Individual image pages lack both the identity AND the navigation. I understand that you have probably decided to take away any distractions from individual images, but a common practice is to at the very least use the minimized versions of the logo and site-wide navigation.

5. Image-to-image navigation: There are only two choices - "Next Image" and the "Back to portfolio". Again, I understand this may well be a conscious choice, but the common practice is to have "Previous", "Back to portfolio" and "Next", on the left middle and right respectively.

Another recommendation for the same section - placing image navigation above the image tends to keep it from moving up and down depending on the image height and thus makes it easier for the user to navigate without having to move the mouse.

6. Finally, I would also recommend creating a simplified, small text version of the main navigation and place it at the very bottom of every page. This is another common practice that helps users navigate to other pages without having to go back to top of the page they just viewed/read.

Overall, simple, clean and rather conservative design that emphasizes your images.

Congratulations. :)

Marko

[domenico Foschi]

Beautiful Merg.
The opening image is very strong, I would like to see it first hand.
Giacomelli came to mind, even though your work is more refined technically.

[Eric Biggerstaff]

Merg,

Love it!

Well done and I am happy to be able to see your fine work whenever I like. It will become a favorite site for me to visit.

Nice job to you and your daughter,

[Brad Rippe]

Really nice site and amazing photography Merg. I'd love to see your work in person sometime.
-Brad

[cyrus]

Looking over this quickly I agree with Marko on almost everything.

Functionally, this is a great site. I think this is what a good site is supposed to be like: simple, clean, easy to understand and navigate.

Why not put a self-portrait in the About section instead of just text?

The view camera article which you're using in the bio section is quite long and wordy so I would break it up somehow - using pullquotes for example.

On a more technical level, I wouldn't use "background-color" in the CSS and instead would use just plain "background" which is the preferred way to set the background color, but your css validates anyway.

You have one HTML validation error:
Line 54: there is no attribute "bordercolor".
…ding="0" cellspacing="0" bordercolor="#666666">

It would be easy to get rid of the tables and do a pure CSS layout too, if you so desire.

All photography sites suffer from 1 problem: not enough text. Your home page for example has no real text content just a single photo (you can change that image easily, right? It would be boring to have to see the same image all the time each time I visited your site) This relative lack of text is understandable since the emphasis is on photos but you would improve your search rankings if you included more text on the various pages.

I suggest submitting it to Google since the site doesn't seem to be indexed yet.

[Rick Moore]

I'll repeat what the others have said: outstanding images presented in an clean, simple manner.

[John Kasaian]

Wonderful site! The design is easy on the eyes and dosen't distract from the images (which look great on my monitor btw!) I like how easy it is to navigate the site. IMHO, your daughter did a fine job!

[Ralph Barker]

Nicely done, Merg.

[ljb0904]

Clean & simple, I like it.

[Jim Galli]

Seems like Merg is always quietly suggesting the classy way to get something done. Your web site is a fine example. Let's see, I've got a daughter that's coming along nicely in design. Maybe in a couple of years she can help me straighten out the mess I've made at mine :D :D

Congratulations Merg, it's perfect.

[Lee Hamiel]

Nice & clean - great site Merg!

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Merg, the images are outstanding, that is what matters!

Jim

[David Karp]

I enjoyed a quick trip through your site very much. And I agree with Domenico, that opening photo is a powerful draw into the site. Wonderful photo.

Eric's article is a great add to the site as well.

[Brian Ellis]

I liked the site and of course the wonderful photographs, thanks for letting us see your work. I really enjoyed Eric's article which I somehow missed when it originally appeared. What a tremendous pleasure it must have been for you to have known so many of the great names in photographic history so well.

[CG]

Simple strong site. Perfectly compliments the beautiful work.

C

[Don Boyd]

Merg,
Your vision and work are stunning! The site allows the work to be the star. Congratulations.

[Hans Berkhout]

Your site offers inspiration, thanks!

[Richard M. Coda]

Beautiful images... thanks for sharing.

Rich

[Henry Ambrose]

Excellent!
Your site loads super fast and places proper emphasis on your photos. You have great work to show and you're showing it well. Congratulations.

[Merg Ross]

Many thanks to those who have so kindly commented. It appears that we achieved our goal.

Marko and Cyrus, thank you for your suggestions. I understand and agree with some of the points that you raise.

[Michael Jones]

I'll repeat what the others have said: outstanding images presented in an clean, simple manner.

I echo that! Thanks.

Mike

[DaveAlbano]

Portfolio #3 - Reeds - I enjoyed very much, simple yet complex. Thank you.

[walter23]

My website is now finished and on line thanks to my daughter. We wanted to keep it as simple as possible with emphasis on the images, not as a marketing tool. Please take a look, we welcome suggestions for improvement.

http://mergross.com/


Wow, I've never looked at your stuff before. At first glance I thought you'd taken your LF camera through some modern art museum and photographed paintings or something. Hah.

[S. Preston Jones]

Great work. I find a lot for "seeing" in your work. Thanks.

[Gustavo]

nice Meg love the steps with snow and the one of Brett but all the work is wonderfull

[Bill_1856]

WOW!!!!
(Where were you when I still had money and was actively collecting?)

[Jerzy Pawlowski]

Great. I can only repeat all above complements. I like your style.
Jerzy

[Ron Marshall]

Very well done site, clean, simple and well presented, many interesting images.

[Merg Ross]

(Where were you when I still had money and was actively collecting?)

Bill, I have been quietly working in the medium I love for over fifty years. Along the way there have been a few fans, and collectors that have appreciated my work. For the most part however, my work has received little attention, partly by choice and partly by chance.

At a very young age I played the museum game and showed my work to people in high places. It worked, and I ended up in collections,exhibitions and publications. But I soon realized that I was very poor at self-promotion and decided instead to put my energy into creating images. Also, the trend for what was acceptable as "fine art" photography was very different from what I was producing. I was out of step with the latest fad, and am even more so today.

My website represents a small sample of what I have produced over a long career in photography. The passion has never waned and new work continues to grace my walls. The website was the inspiration of my daughter, who thought that more people should be aware of my work. Perhaps so. Anyway, thanks to all who have taken a look and for your comments.

[Kirk Gittings]

Hope you get many many more years of such extraordinary creativity and productivity.

[paulr]

Wonderful work, Merg.

There were a few times when I was about to say "hmmm, that looks like Weston might have done it," or "that looks like Minor might have done it," but each time I looked again and thought, "no, they didn't do it like that!" Definitely a unique body of work.

My only criticism is that your prices would be more appropriate if it were 1970. I fear that ou're giving your work away.

[kjsphotography]

Hello Merg,

I must say, you have some rather beautiful images.

Thank you for sharing..

Kevin

[Nitish Kanabar]

I really enjoyed seeing your work. These are very beautiful images. Thank you for sharing.

May I please request you to add more images to your website? I'd love to see more of your work.

[fenderbja]

To get rid of that annoying image tool bar when hovering over an image in Internet Explorer add the following tag within your head tags:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="imagetoolbar" CONTENT="no">

it would have to be done on each page, but it's better then that thing popping up and hidding part of your beautiful images.

[Merg Ross]

Brandon, thank you for that suggestion. I often wondered if it was possible to do as you suggest. I surely agree with you that it is annoying.

Thanks, also, for the kind comment.