New Website

[patapuss]

Hello all. I have just launched a website that corresponds with a new series of work. I'm trying to promote the site and also get some feedback on the site's functionality. What do you think?

http://www.newhallucinations.com

[Ed Kelsey]

I dunno about the name seems a little creepy. It works fine on my monitor but the large size will impede viewing on small screens like laptops.

[patapuss]

For a little clarification, this is my artist statement:

Habit is defined as a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiologic exposure that shows itself in regularity. Psychological pioneer Sigmund Freud’s writing suggests that people are creatures of habit. In his essay Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through, Freud coins the term “repetition compulsion” to describe persons that suffer from certain psychological disorders who replicate their behavior to repress unwanted memories. Likewise, a daily commute and its repetition of actions hinders ones perception of the passing world, rendering a driver blind to the life around them. Although no scientific correlation exists between the automation of a commute and Freud’s theories concerning the repression of unwanted (disturbing) memories, the latter does pose a paradigm for the act of repression through repetitive behavior. New Hallucinations represents a conscious departure from the habitual nature of daily commutes by giving notice to the minute details of often overlooked spaces. While the images are not ultimately about the streets on which I travel, the freedom of movement offered by the road is vital to my process. The world is my palette and the street serves as the catalyst for my discovery.
Photography as a medium has special characteristics that delineate it from other forms of art. For one, a photograph represents that which, “has indeed been”. Every photograph is steeped with implied truth, as every image is made with an interval of passing time, bearing witness to something that has existed within space. However, as Roland Barthes claims, a photograph “is not there,” it is not the thing itself, but rather a representation of the thing depicted. Photography, then, can be interpreted as a new form of hallucination being simultaneously in front of you yet not there at all. This duality coupled with New Hallucinations’ banal imagery, amounts to a state of hyperreality. The world is fleeting; as one drives, one unknowingly passes scenes that may never again be witnessed. New Hallucinations archives these temporal epiphanies, confronting the viewer with a fragment of what exists on the periphery of perception, simultaneously inviting its audience to look beyond the bustle of everyday life.

Patrick Sheehan

[Frank Petronio]

Why not put that statement on the splash page so everyone is clear?

[Pawlowski6132]

Site is very cool viewed from my iPad. I enjoy innovative sites like this. Please don't clutter your site with your statement. No offense.

[Ben Syverson]

Cool design, and I like the series! On my screen, I have to scroll down to see the bottom of the vertical shots, and the images are a little pixelated from being blown up so much. I'm on a 1920x1200 display.

[Brian C. Miller]

For a little clarification, this is my artist statement:

There was a thread a while back where one of the members was looking for help with his artist's statement. I'm sure he would appreciate help from someone like you who can actually write one of these things.

I'm viewing your website on a notebook with a 1024x768 screen. What is really annoying about the website is that you have Javascript to pop to the top or the bottom, like a loop. It is interesting that the images can be moved independently.

[patapuss]

What is really annoying about the website is that you have Javascript to pop to the top or the bottom, like a loop.

The loop is a device to reinforce the idea of habit or repetition of action. I am trying to reprogram the site so that the image size adjusts to the size of the window, aleviating the cut off vertical images.

[sully75]

it's pretty buggy in firefox. Pictures are sort of flickering all over the place. pictures are too big to view in my (pretty big) monitor.

On the splash page, it's pretty confusing where to go to see some pictures.

You might check out the post "your website sucks" on the A Photo Editor blog. I'm not trying to be snarky, that's the name of the post. It's good.

[Darin Boville]

Innovative design. I like the moving picts around bit but on my 15 inch MacBook I'm not sure what that gains me. Seems like you are on to something. Don't care for the artist statement (I hate almost all artists statements!).

--Darin

[kev curry]

Maybe I'm missing the point but why would anyone want to give ''notice to the minute details of often overlooked spaces'' like traffic cones and power lines and garbage bins etc etc? I can put these things into an environmental, political and social context but I don't think thats your intention here. I just don't get it.
People routinely filter out the monotony of everyday life for good reason, its dull and monotonous as your images testify.

[Jim Michael]

The images scroll OK on my Kindle Fire but they are not centered.

You didn't quite convince me in your second paragraph. Are these banal images or temporal epiphanies? You reference Barthes, but you don't really give your opinion and rationale, and there seems to be a bit of handwaving from Barthes to photography as hallucination. But I may be too analytical.

Repetition seems to be a theme in your show. The van with the stickers seems to reflect the Freud reference and some type of compulsive behavior on the part of the owner. Fun stuff.

[ROL]

I'm trying to promote the site and also get some feedback on the site's functionality. What do you think?

I'm going to take another tack here, based solely on what you've asked for – functionality, not "artistic" style or content:


The site is quite slow to load on my DSL. I almost bailed. The pix that come in, though fuzzily visible, are not fully resolved for at least a minute. It would be inadvisable to show a photograph until totally loaded, otherwise the impression is left that your photos are technically unfocused, particularly if the user won't wait or doesn't realize they are still loading, which is exactly what I thought. No pic need be larger than 72 DPI.

The site dumps the user inexplicably (other than for "style" sake) into the middle of a lengthy scroll screen. Divy up the the work up into logical, manageable (linked) chunks. Designing a brief home page with a representative image and/or statement, slideshow, or thumbnail gallery feature may be a more productive way to greet your users.

You can test your own site with various browsers. Just download and install them on your computer.

Regarding promotion:

Given the above, IMO the site has a very amateurish, unfocused, decade old look and feel – unless that was your intention, then my apologies – mission accomplished! You may or may not find some other useful Webmarketing info here (http://www.rangeoflightphotography.com/pages/webmarketing).

[patapuss]

Maybe I'm missing the point but why would anyone want to give ''notice to the minute details of often overlooked spaces'' like traffic cones and power lines and garbage bins etc etc? I can put these things into an environmental, political and social context but I don't think thats your intention here. I just don't get it.
People routinely filter out the monotony of everyday life for good reason, its dull and monotonous as your images testify.

I don't mean to be rude, but your comment is unnecessary. My original post explicitly asks for input on the site's functionality. I am not interested in critique based on artistic value. If you feel so strongly against the work, why waste your time bashing it?

[atlcruiser]

I sort of like the pictures....the presentation bothers me. I cant really figure out the plan for the web page. It starts in the iddle.... I am on IE and the images will not center on the screen so to see them I need to scroll. The text overlays some of the images....

I could see this as part of an installation in a gallery but it is difficult to navigate as a web page. Am I getting information or being drawn into a project?

[r.e.]

patapuss,

I gather that you hired a professional designer to do this - http://dgivens.com - and I'm having trouble squaring that with my reaction.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I've tried the site on an iPad and a MacBook Air and it comes off as chaotic. Even on a straight technical level, when I loaded the site on my MacBook Air, I initially wondered whether the images were all out of focus (see ROL's comment to the same effect). Sorry that I can't be more positive, but I think that you need to have a serious discussion with the gentleman who designed this.

[Jim Michael]

Sort of looks like an image rendering issue on my Mac, doesn't do it on the little Fire reader.

[RickV]

In the context of your artist statement, the functionality is appropriate and works well.
The need to scroll the oversize images conforms to your premise of "confronting the viewer with a fragment of what exists on the periphery of perception, simultaneously inviting its audience to look beyond the bustle of everyday life". My only functional suggestion would be to get rid of the white background and deploy a background to your images which enhances the delivery of your statement. Whilst my last sentence may smack of "critique based on artistic value", I feel that functionality and artistic value share a sensitive dependence upon one another.

[kev curry]

I don't mean to be rude, but your comment is unnecessary. My original post explicitly asks for input on the site's functionality. I am not interested in critique based on artistic value. If you feel so strongly against the work, why waste your time bashing it?

With your statement in mind; that your primary interest lies in technical functionality over artistic content is puzzling to someone like me.
Maybe I'm just too underdeveloped to have access to such work. No matter.

[sully75]

I don't mean to be rude, but your comment is unnecessary. My original post explicitly asks for input on the site's functionality. I am not interested in critique based on artistic value. If you feel so strongly against the work, why waste your time bashing it?

It is rude, dude. Hard to seperate the "artistic" issues from the design issues here. You put it out there for people to look at. I took 5 minutes trying to make out where you were going and couldn't really figure it out.

It sucks getting criticism about something you've worked really hard on, but that's the breaks. It's actually really hard to get someone to be honest with you about stuff like that, so you might want to thank the poster.

[Frank Petronio]

I figure the place to get creative and do something unique is with your content, not the user-interface. To gain viewers you need to engage them rapidly and confusing them with the interface detracts them from looking at the images themselves.

Think of a Western book model. Once you deviate from the Left-hand binding, Left-to-Right, Top-to-Bottom reading method of laying it out, the book design becomes the most important thing to a new reader. That's great for the designer but not so wonderful for your content.

To me, the artist's statement is the art work here, the pictures not so much. So it really could just be a statement and a scroll of static pictures, you could do it all on Tumbler template and reach 10000x more people.

I'm not in love with the artist's statement myself, I just see that is where you put your efforts.

[Mike Anderson]

I definitely don't like the scroll-wrap-around (hit the bottom and it jumps back to the top) - it's too unexpected and disorienting and doesn't serve much of a purpose that I can see.

The page numbers can be obfuscated by images - major mistake IMO. One solution is to put them in a vertical array off to the side where they can't overlap with an image. I'd also make the page # indication more substantial like a highlighted block or rectangle instead of a feint underline.

The starting-in-the-middle-of-the-page doesn't bother me.

I would work on page loading time - there might be some tricks to have some initial images appear more quickly so you don't need the "please wait" sign.

...Mike

[patapuss]

With your statement in mind; that your primary interest lies in technical functionality over artistic content is puzzling to someone like me.
Maybe I'm just too underdeveloped to have access to such work. No matter.

At this juncture, I have committed to the content of the series and am well aware of how the images function. I have hung the images in a gallery and had my opening. However, my website is brand new and still has some kinks to be resolved. In my OP, I provided a link with a request for feedback on the site's functionality. I figured this forum would be full of tech-savvy people who could give good/constructive criticism on how I can improve upon the existing site. I did not anticipate nor request a critique, or in your case, a complete dismissal of the work. If you would like to open a critique of the work I will gladly start a new thread in which you can speak your mind. However, my OP clearly asks for suggestions on how well the site functions.

[patapuss]

I would work on page loading time - there might be some tricks to have some initial images appear more quickly so you don't need the "please wait" sign.

I agree. I will bring this up with the designer. I'm not sure why the images are taking so long to load. They are sized to 72dpi and are not that large. Thank you for your suggestions.

[Ed Kelsey]

what part of "it functions for shit" didn't you understand?

[Mike Anderson]

I agree. I will bring this up with the designer. I'm not sure why the images are taking so long to load. They are sized to 72dpi and are not that large. Thank you for your suggestions.

I think the images are being resize by the browser, so I'm guessing every image is resized before any are displayed.

Another thing, when the window is resized the scroll jumps around - strange behavior.

...Mike

[kev curry]

Maybe I'm missing the point but why would anyone want to give ''notice to the minute details of often overlooked spaces'' like traffic cones and power lines and garbage bins etc etc? I can put these things into an environmental, political and social context but I don't think thats your intention here. I just don't get it.
People routinely filter out the monotony of everyday life for good reason, its dull and monotonous as your images testify.



I did not anticipate nor request a critique, or in your case, a complete dismissal of the work.

I didn't completely dismiss the work. I asked what I thought/think is a valid question (quoted above).

Maybe you would have received my above comments less personally if I had used the word ''show'' instead of ''testify''. Maybe that would have made it clearer that my focus was centered more on the monotony of the things photographed rather than the photographs themselves?

I'm still stuck on understanding where the inherent value is in consciously driving peoples attention to the mundane prosaic debris that clutters everyday life. I generally look for some useful social function when pondering artistic endeavors; I'm struggling here. No offence.

I'm doing it again, offering unsolicited comments on content.

[J. Fada]

Are you a photographer or a designer? Quite frankly I can't get past the poor interface to look at the images, which are poorly rendered by the design/designer. There is no excuse for your designer to design something that makes your photographs look like crap, (i.e. using low res. fuzzy images, improperly sized to the screen). The scroll aspect makes almost no sense on the vertical and it is quite annoying. And whose idea was it to make the images draggable? Not good.

I understand that you (or your designer more likely) is trying to be innovative and you should be applauded for the effort, but the site falls flat for showing off your images which is the sole purpose of having a website if you are a photographer. Your designer might be trying to make a portfolio piece showcasing his design instead of showcasing your images.

The upside is that in general you have a good vibe going on with the other elements. If you changed the way the images were displayed, as in smaller and sharper and one at a time on the screen, you would have a nice website. You could perhaps change the scrolling to horizontal and one at a time with a click instead of dragging a scrollbar.

[sully75]

Basically innovative websites where you have to hunt around to see the actual photographs just plain suck. They are unprofessional. If you were forwarding this on to someone to show them your work, and they had limited time, they would (if they made it past the url name) would have clicked out of it in the 10 seconds it took them to try to find an image.

I'm not sure what the design offers over something like a flickr river page, except with your site, you can't actually scroll through the pictures.

Many of them are really soft/fuzzy/out of focus, and I'm thinking that is not your intent. So something about the way the site is rendering your photos is not working.

It also just seems like a lot of random photos (some really nice, some pretty generic). It seems like editing it down to a theme would be helpful.

[Ben Syverson]

This thread is an ugly embarrassment to the LFF community. The OP asked for "feedback on the site's functionality," not "a non-constructive critique of the site contents."

It is unbelievably rude to offer critique when none is requested.

[patapuss]

This thread is an ugly embarrassment to the LFF community. The OP asked for "feedback on the site's functionality," not "a non-constructive critique of the site contents."

It is unbelievably rude to offer critique when none is requested.

Thank you! With a few exceptions of constructive feedback, I feel that my intentions have been absurdly misconstrued.

[J. Fada]

Whenever people attack you it should be accepted as a badge of honor because you obviously did something to illicit a response. The worst thing in the world is for the work to be ignored. I am not sure why people chose to comment on the work either, but it is the internet after all. It takes all kinds.

[r.e.]

Patapusd,

Could you explain what the line is, with respect to your gallery showing and your web site, between substance and functionality.

I am getting the impression that the "show" is both the photographs in a gallery and the photographs on the web. If that is correct, we need your assistance on where the line is between substance, with respect to which you do not want comments, and functionality, on which you have invited comments.

[kev curry]

This thread is an ugly embarrassment to the LFF community.

Maybe just a smidgen of over statement here:-)

[Frank Petronio]

This thread is an ugly embarrassment to the LFF community. The OP asked for "feedback on the site's functionality," not "a non-constructive critique of the site contents."

It is unbelievably rude to offer critique when none is requested.

Some of us are guilty of honesty. A lot of us don't like dumb websites.

[kev curry]

I would have thought that if someone took the decision and the trouble to launch their work on the Internet they would at least be ready to defend it in the face of what is self evidently very mild criticism and not stand behind the spurious 'principle' of.... ''It is unbelievably rude to offer critique when none is requested''.

[Scott Walker]

Hello all. I have just launched a website that corresponds with a new series of work. I'm trying to promote the site and also get some feedback on the site's functionality. What do you think?

http://www.newhallucinations.com

I found it very difficult to navigate the site and Im not sure the links worked properly.

[patapuss]

kev curry,

As I have previously stated, I will gladly open a new thread in which to critique the inherent value of the work. I am not shy to criticism, nor am I hiding behind "spurious principles." I have started a thread with a clear request for input on my website's functionality so that I can tweak it and make it as smooth as possible. You, on the other hand, have taken the thread in a direction that is unrelated to the OP's intent. I do not know what has instigated your sparring attitude toward my thread and work, but it is not appreciated.

[patapuss]

I found it very difficult to navigate the site and Im not sure the links worked properly.

Are you viewing it in Firefox of IE? If so, the designer is still working out kinks for those browsers. I have been looking at the site using Chrome and Safari with no problems.

[patapuss]

Some of us are guilty of honesty. A lot of us don't like dumb websites.

Dumb is a relative term. Your opinion is not a universal truth. Some members seem to think that the site is innovative whilst others deem it deplorable. All I asked for was feedback on the site's functionality, not a conversation on the work's inherent value or your personal opinion of the design qualities. While you may feel that the site is "dumb," deeming it so is far from being honest, it is just one man's opinion. Honesty would be telling me what machine you are using, the size of your monitor, what browser you are using, and the problems that occur. I am looking at the site using a specific computer/ monitor/ browser and am experiencing none of the rendering/ glitch issues that many have pointed out. This is why I made the OP: to obtain helpful information from a diverse group of people using varied machines and monitors to better program my website. It is my understanding that this forum exists to promote an atmosphere of helpful insight and constructive criticism, where has this gone?

[Scott Walker]

It seems to work fine with the up & down arrow keys but no scrolling and clicking on the links does not work. I am using a PC with IE.

I tried it with my iPhone and the site works great so it must be an issue with my browser

[patapuss]

It seems to work fine with the up & down arrow keys but no scrolling and clicking on the links does not work. I am using a PC with IE.

I tried it with my iPhone and the site works great so it must be an issue with my browser

Thanks for the info :D

[kev curry]

kev curry,

As I have previously stated, I will gladly open a new thread in which to critique the inherent value of the work. I am not shy to criticism, nor am I hiding behind "spurious principles." I have started a thread with a clear request for input on my website's functionality so that I can tweak it and make it as smooth as possible. You, on the other hand, have taken the thread in a direction that is unrelated to the OP's intent. I do not know what has instigated your sparring attitude toward my thread and work, but it is not appreciated.

patapuss,

OK point taken. Please except my humble apologies for causing you aggravation. You should think about starting that new thread to critique content, I think that would make an interesting talk.

Keep smiling;-)

[patapuss]

kev curry,

Let's get this party started!

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?p=807136#post807136

p.s. thank you for the apology. Let's continue our conversation in a new arena...