My Website

[Struan Gray]

After years of good intentions I have finally put together a photographic website:

http://www.struangray.com

Comment's, suggestions, bugs and unstinting praise all welcome in equal measure.


PS: In case anyone was wondering, this is not me:

http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=176259133

[Miguel Curbelo]

I like your website, it is austere and effective, and your photographs are presented in a simple uncluttered way, devoid of any artistic affectation or pretence.The design and the content reflect the way you come across in your posts: your observations are enlightening and touching, and you express complex issues in an elegant, uncomplicated manner.
A trivial question regarding the images, I am curious about the fact that they are all square, when you have worked with different formats...

[Diane Maher]

Very nice layout and photos. I like the Gaels pictures the best. I like pretty pictures of beaches and water since all we have here are rivers and lakes. :)

[Struan Gray]

Miguel, thank you. I'll admit I was fishing for compliments, but yours was more gracious and pleasing than I had any right to expect.

Squares: I could (should) write an essay, but it really comes down to the fact that I just like them. To me the static shape makes it more obvious that I am showing a spatial pattern and not a temporal one: I've made a thing, not captured a moment. I'm also on a formalist kick at present, and there are more ways of slicing up a square than a rectangle. I use 6x6 in MF and crop for 4x5.

Diane: go there - Scotland that is. You might never make it back.

[Brian Ellis]

No need to fish for compliments, these photographs would draw them on their own. I also really appreciated the introductions that accompany each gallery and the simplicity of the site. Excellent.

[Colin Graham]

Very effective. Wonderful work. I like Gaels section the best too, but Tanglings is a close second.

[Henry Ambrose]

Excellent!

[Frank Petronio]

I really like it alot, it is well thought out and constructed. It even validates. Bravo.

It compliments your excellent photos. The text is good too.

[mono]

Good website, Struan!
The "smoking" Suilven is great!
I have another Cul Beag...
And I will make it back in April!

[paulr]

I've already told Struan that I hope to steal his code someday; it's such a perfect, unobtrusive website design.

But sadly, I'll never get away with stealing his amazing images.

[Kuzano]

First, let me say it's absolutely refreshing to see a truly sane person develop a simple, navigable non-distracting web site for photography. Love the use of white space. While there is little navigation direction, it's not difficult to figure out what to do and get around. NO MUSIC OR ANIMATION---Perfect by my reckoning.

Assuming you designed this for your own use, you validate my argument that many professional web designers and web programmers are way too caught up in the Bling of the internet, and very few of them know much at all about "real marketing", the type of work I did for 25 years, before the internet. Advertising and Selling.

Back to you. Excellent. I like it a lot.

One thought. A professor at the University of Oregon, during my marketing education told me something that is an overriding practice of mine as I develop copy for marketing.

She said, "create a rough draft of all the essential points you want to make in your approach to marketing a service or product. Then put all those points in a stream of text, separating the points by paragraph form. Bullet some items where possible to reduce text. When you think you have final copy, have someone else read it for proof and grammar. (not always the same person). Reduce it to the copy you want to send to the printer. Now put it away. Wait a day or two and pick it back up. NOW, do everything you can to cut the text by half. Take out every multi syllable word you can that is not critical to telling the story."

So, I suggest that you love multisyllabic word to an extreme. So do I, and it was a hard habit to overcome. Don't really know that I have even now. Plus, I will say that if your intent is to tell a story on all these galleries, I like the idea very much. However, if your are intending to market your work, the stories detract from the pictures as it takes to much concentration to follow the word line. Glean it down. Don't get me wrong, the stories add a nice element, but I stumble over the long words.

I, and I have been told so, consider myself well educated. I wonder what a less capable reader will do when confronted with your text.

Otherwise, Unstinting Praise!

Thanks for letting us look at it. And as mentioned, your code could be a moneymaker for you.

NOW pardon me while I cut all this in half!

[adrian tyler]

i especially like the "sand boils" gallery, ah the days when my wee one was the same weight as my camera bag and i could have one on each side!

... everyone i take to kinlochbervie from madrid falls instantly in love with it, i'll be circulating this for a while, look forward to seeing new work too.

adrian

[domenico Foschi]

Struan, really beautiful work.
Gaels is astonishing, I would like to see them in person.
They must be a knock out.
Great Job.

[Annie M.]

Struan...

The ocean images are sublime... Please do not augment your writing to fit a 'product paradigm' it flows beautifully as it is.

[Ralph Barker]

Nicely done, Struan - both the site and the images.

[Struan Gray]

Thank you all. It's a thrill, and a relief, to see my darlings received with such praise.

When I started what turned into the Utkant project I vowed that I would make a conscious effort simply to be myself, and that has continued into the more recent work and the website design. I am glad I did that, but the flipside is that I am forced to expose something about which I care deeply, and the classic English pose of the insouciant gentleman amateur doesn't work for me any more. The encouragement here will be a big help when I tout this work in the wider world.

The website design was a process of stripping out everything that annoys me about other photographers' websites. I wanted the feel of a book or portfolio, and not a tool catalogue: I really hate the way conventional web design wastes precious space with big rectangular blocks of colour and pointless logos.

If anyone wants to copy the code they're welcome. There is so little remaining in the pared-down html files it would be really hard to prove plagiarism, and in any case the design elements are not mine: they're lifted from London Transport by way of Edward Tufte (http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi) (who - unlike some - I do not worship, but who certainly knows how to use white space and signage).

Frank: it validates because you have talked so much sense about html and websites in previous threads here at LF.info. If you like my site, give yourself a pat on the back, and I'll buy the beers if you're ever in this part of the world.

Kuzano: you'd get on well with my wife, who sighs and rolls her eyes every time she stumbles through another example of my purple prose. I work as a scientist, surrounded by people who have English as a second language, and I do exactly as you say in almost everything I write - but that's exactly why it is fun for me to let my poetic hair down when writing about photography. There is a danger of slipping into pomposity and bathos, and I edit and re-edit knowing that I am prone to both, but I want the text on the site to reflect me as an individual, not my audience as an undifferentiated mass. I do want to use the site as advertising, but to people like art publishers who will be coming to my polysyllables from the other direction: I'm hoping they will see my writing as refreshingly unturgid artspeak.

Folker: you lucky devil. Easter is my favourite time in the Highlands. The subtlety of the tonality is just breathtaking, the storms are magnificent, the atmosphere is clarity personified, and there are no midges. Well, no midges outside of the Hidden Valley in Glencoe at least.

Everyone: Thanks again. It's a real boost to get your praise and feedback.

[r.e.]

PS: In case anyone was wondering, this is not me:

http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=176259133

Maybe not, but he understands the internet.

Funny, but Mika, who did the music used on his video (which is a hoot) also did the music used for this video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=L0CRS46XGUc

Maybe it's a generation gap - just kids and fisheries biologists who don't understand the elegance of strict HTML/CSS applied to circa 1995 web design.

I won't necessarily take that kid's page over Struan's work in terms of content, although I just might because of the lack of artifice, but I'll sure take it over Struan's presentation.

As for the biologist's work, I think that his presentation and internet savvy are worth considering. What the hell, I also think that his little film is an out and out work of art.

Yeah, I know that I'm being provocative.

[Struan Gray]

Believe me, the only thing less attractive than my dancing, is my singing. My pages are static for good reason.

I would use 1795 design if only monitors could draw a thin enough line.

[r.e.]

Struan, it isn't just a matter of static or otherwise.

With the greatest respect, the approaches taken by people on this forum to the internet, and the obsession with form, are not just out of touch with where the internet is going, but just plain backward.

Your site is a perfect example of that, and the consequence, in my respectful view, is that you are not showing your work at its best.

That said, I would be the first to acknowledge that my view is way out of sync with what the vast majority of people on this forum appear to think.

[Struan Gray]

Can you give an example of the sort of photographer's website you do approve of?

PS: I've seen this

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showpost.php?p=311591&postcount=18

and although i can see the attraction of the sites you link to, I don't see how my photographs would be 'better' served by that sort of approach. What would be in it for me?

[mono]

Hi Struan,

you already made me homesick!!

Yes, we have been to the Hidden Valley, I notice you really know Scotland ;-))

Thanks for your thoughts on that time of the year. We were a bit afraid of going there so early but you encourage us!
It will all come out in the wash...

[paulr]

Struan, the only negative comment I've gotten out of anyone came from an art director who said the white background hurt his eyes. I asked him if he had an especially bright monitor, and he said, "maybe." Take that for what it's worth. Personally, I think the design is perfect. On both my monitors (dim, calibrated CRT at home and bright, uncalibrated LCD at work) it looks beautiful and undistracting and pain-free.

[Mark Carney]

Straun

I love your site. The simplicity is great. The comment about the white should be considered.

Most of all I love the square. I'm drawn to it. I shoot alot of 6x6 and when doing 4x5 tend to compose square anticipating a crop.

mark

[Struan Gray]

Thanks guys. And a genuine thanks to r.e. for a heads up. I'm just not convinced that 'keeping up' is a game worth playing - yet.

My next project is a website for my wife's translation business, and I suspect I'll have to indulge in a little more eye candy there.

I like sparse and white:

http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/el/pro01.html

http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/rarebook/art3283c/1932.htm

http://www.janjohansson.org/jps.html (hit play on the embedded mp3 player, and turn down the default volume a bit, and go and buy a copy of the album. Buy three.)

Perhaps I'll compromise with cream :-)
http://www.studio-international.co.uk/studio-images/holbein/audley_b.asp

[Miguel Curbelo]

Jazz pa svenska och jazz pa ryska are the only 2 CDs that I listen to when I am in my darkroom!
Mostly because the rest of the family can't stand the idea of ever having to listen to them again...

[Nate Battles]

Nice website Struan.

[Gordon Moat]

A few things could be a bit cleaner in the approach to coding, though the simplified design does place your images as the emphasis, which I think is the correct way to do this. When specifying fonts, pixel sizes are recommended instead of point sizes. Also, avoid inches specifications for margins, and use pixel dimensions instead. This is because screens are not simply 72dpi, and not everyone with a giant monitor runs it at maximum settings. The worst aspect I found of your website is that I need to scroll to see all of it; though quite likely you have a large monitor and did not consider someone viewing it on a laptop monitor.

You don't have to be super modern in your approach, though there are certain aspects that will help your website. The look at feel could be exactly the same, without need for scrolling on the opening page, and it could scale up on larger monitors. One of these modern tools is CSS. You don't need to know CSS, though it can help to understand it. If you can find someone familiar with web design, they can likely explain enough to better inform you of why it is a good way to do websites. The designer I worked with on my layout provided me an explanation of the why and how of coding choices, and left me with a set-up that is easy for me to edit or update . . . this I think is the way we should work with these people.

Oh . . . and I definitely agree with everyone else in this thread, your images are great. I particularly liked Gaels, and I am not even interested in most landscape works I see.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)

[Struan Gray]

Miguel: Jazz på svenska is ubiquitous here in Sweden, so much so that it is now used in adverts whenever they want a cozy homelife feel. Johansson and Georg Reidel, the bassist, both wrote a lot of music for the childrens' programs my kids love, so they're getting infected at an early age :-)

Gordon: thanks for the specifics. I'll admit I have a poor grasp of the tradeoffs involved in all the multiplicity of ways one can achieve the same thing with HTML, XHTML and CSS. My primary goal was to get something online that looked the way I wanted in most browsers. I'm intrigued by the possibilities of more complex CSS, but for the simple pages on my site at present I can't see a big advantage over tables.

My laptop is 800 pixels tall, and I made things so that I only lose the copyright notice off the bottom of the screen. There again, I use a minimal toolbar on my browser. For smaller screens, or for those who like to pretend their browser is the flight deck of a B2 bomber, at least it's clear that there is more content hanging off the bottom of the window.

Thanks again all who have commented. My next task is to scan some newer work...

[Stan. L-B]

Your site shows all the hallmarks of desired uncluttered simplicity - so refeshing.
Most of your pictures are excellent; I find it difficult to choose a favourite from any of your sections.
Your text is descriptive and passionate in execution which enhances your image display, to my mind no changes called for.
I have enjoyed touring the North West Highlands of Scotland each year so have a sympathetic understanding of your attitude. The wife and I are now working on a system to beat the midges. Thanks for your post.

[r.e.]

Can you give an example of the sort of photographer's website you do approve of?

PS: I've seen this

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showpost.php?p=311591&postcount=18

and although i can see the attraction of the sites you link to, I don't see how my photographs would be 'better' served by that sort of approach. What would be in it for me?

Hi,

There are examples of photographers' sites that I find interesting in the very post to which you refer. If you want conservative, have a look at Marcus Bleasdale's site. It's pretty good.

There's nothing in it for you if you share the view of the internet that is prevalent on this forum. I have yet to see a site created by anybody who participates on this forum that has even a remote connnection to what is happening on the internet in the here and now.

What can I say, discussions about the web on this forum come across as the meanderings of a bunch of old men whose understanding of the internet, if they understand it at all, got frozen in time 10-12 years ago. Actually, there's one exception. Frank Petroni gets it, but if I recall correctly, he said, in a discussion not so long ago, that his own site, and by implication the whole concept of blogs, has fallen behind where the internet is going.

Cheers

P.S. Try the link from that post to Andreas Muller's work. It's pretty cool stuff.

[Struan Gray]

I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree. As I said, I see the attraction of the sites you cite, I just don't think it's for me. Their fundamental purpose is different, and so is their presentation and information architecture.

I have three problems with that style of site. The first is what I think of as the frames-within-frames-within-frames problem. You can't avoid the screen bezel, the operating system bars, the window frame and the application bar, but I see no need to add all those further levels of converging rectangles. I don't like double-matting either. Yes I am obsessed with form: it's a major reason I'm a photographer.

The second problem is the tendency to look like the cover of a magazine. Side bars, subsidiary headlines, intrusive navigation and more bloody coloured rectangles all over the place. Why would I want that for a simple, relatively static presentation of my photographs?

The third problem is that on the vast majority of sites you end up spending more time looking at transitions than at photographs. Your examples mostly avoid that, but as you say, they are some of the top coders in the business. I can't afford them, or the time to try and match them.

I think I 'get' the contemporary internet, and I think I understand the reasons for current trends in website design. I just don't think they suit my purposes. Telling me I need to be more hip isn't going to persuade me otherwise. I do however appreciate the effort :-)

FWIW, if I were to try and get with it, I would probably end up with something like this (minus the fiddly, feedback-free navigation):

http://www.michaelroulier.com/

Don't hold your breath though....

[Merg Ross]

Struan, the simplicity of your website complements your vision. Well done!

Thank you for sharing.

[Mark Sampson]

Mr. Ross just said it for me.
Keep up the good work-
Mark