My New (Jan 12, 2012) Website

[Frank Petronio]

I just went live with my website (http://frankpetronio.com) using the A Photo Folio (http://aphotofolio.com/) service (hopefully the DNS will be updated in your area by now.)

It's a Flash site with HTML, iPad, and Mobile versions. The idea is to be on par with other commercial photographers, with a minimalistic interface that displays my images as well as possible.

It replaces a 6.5 year old Movable Type-based blog and gallery format that was well received. But I wanted to display larger images with a modern, art-buyer friendly interface (i.e. make it like other contemporary photographers's sites so it is familiar to navigate). I also wanted to eliminate the old blog with over 1000 entries, since most of them were irrelevant - and I want to control my public image a little better. (Everything is archived of course.)

I still have to set up the iPad app and link to Facebook (yes I succumbed and made an artists' fan page (http://www.facebook.com/frankpetroniophotographer)). And frankly there are a couple of frustrating things I can't do with the A Photo Folio template that would make it a better and more consistent design - but to their credit, they may well adapt my modifications system-wide. (One is to have a persistent copyright notice in the footer of every page, an oversight that really bugs me.) (Or I can hire someone to modify the template myself.)

Still, even though it is not exactly how I would want to design a site from scratch, the image management and gallery system is rock solid, and while I hate to admit it, images in Flash have a really nice look, especially on a larger monitor.

Comments are welcome, especially if you find a typo ;-p

Oh and while I have toned down the R-rated imagery to just a few topless female boobs and a torn Trojan wrapper, you might not want to look at it in front of the kids or during your political campaign.

[Leigh]

It's a Flash site
All I get is a white screen with a message saying "Please upgrade your Flash player".

Mine is up to date as far as I know.

Flash is a very poor choice for visual sites.
It hogs bandwidth, forces visitors to view content in a mode not of their own choosing, and is not compatible with some devices.

Sorry to rain on your parade.

- Leigh

[Richard Wasserman]

Works fine for me, although I have to say I am not a fan of Flash either. Can you make the red numbers that count up to 100 disappear when clicking on a new page? The new site has a nice clean look, but I find the white background a bit bright.

[Oren Grad]

I really liked your Movable Type-based site, especially the blog front-end - it was clean, straightforward and responsive.

Afraid I'm less happy with what I see of the new one so far:

* It feels sluggish by comparison; waiting through the counts is annoying.
* The different spacing of the gallery menu links vs the other links is awkward - perhaps have the gallery menus in one closely-spaced set and then the other links in a separate closely-spaced set.
* The navigation links look awkward floating at the lower left.
* Having the thumnails float on a transparent layer above the picture currently on display looks messy and distracting.
* Having the "About" content - and no other content - come sliding in from the left is weird. I'd rather that nothing came sliding in from anywhere.

I'm afraid it feels like a step backward. The bugs and distractions sabotage the minimalist feel.

I have no idea how much weight you should place on my reactions. FWIW, I'm an extreme minimalist when it comes to my own website design preferences. But I've never tried to create a website intended to sell anything and I have no intuition for how your intended audience will react.

[vinny]

I guess I need a new computer.

[Tom J McDonald]

I have no complaints.

[Scott Walker]

Works on the iPhone
Liked your old format better though.....

[Frank Petronio]

Thanks, keep it coming.

I'm not very happy with what they offer for text pages either, it is limited and impossible to format other than changing fonts.

The use of Flash is a conscious one, albeit reluctant. On a 27" monitor it scales up very nicely ~ they are large images (200kb) so they take a bit extra to load.

There is an html version to click on if you don't have Flash installed.

Not defending it but explaining the rationale. I will be messing with it (forever).

[drew.saunders]

3 seconds from initial opening of the page until I see something other than white, which is 2.99 seconds longer than most people these days are willing to wait.

[Scott Walker]

Checked it out again at work, PC running internet explorer..... 24" monitor = way better.
Much easier to navigate than with the iPhone. No wait time for me to load initially, but the images did take a second or so which I didn't find problematic. The mouseover feature is well done. I did find the font a bit small on the text pages.

I like it, very clean and fluid :)

[bob carnie]

Looks very clean and I like this website. Great images btw.

[Oren Grad]

* It feels sluggish by comparison; waiting through the counts is annoying.

Some context I should have included to help you interpret this: I'm viewing it with IE9 on a recent-vintage desktop machine running Vista, connected to the web through a slowish (typically ~600 Kb/sec download) DSL line.

[Armin Seeholzer]

Very good Frank now you get famous, clear design and good work!

Cheers Armin

[cdholden]

I agree. Flash is the work of the devil.
In spite of that, I do like the site. It is uncluttered and simple to navigate. That makes it very easy on the eyes.

Chris

[Ben Syverson]

All I get is a white screen with a message saying "Please upgrade your Flash player".

Mine is up to date as far as I know.
Frank, I got the same thing. I'm up to date. I reloaded the page, and now it works fine. But just a heads up that a potential client may see the Flash upgrade message and close the window never to come back...

[Mike Anderson]

Well other than being a little sluggish it's a good viewing experience. Except I don't like the thumbnail view scrolling - I hate that kind of scrolling, maybe I'm unusual that way.

I think you have a google-fence up, that is there's no way google can walk, hence put links into, your site. I think.

[Mike Anderson]

...
I think you have a google-fence up, that is there's no way google can walk, hence put links into, your site. I think.

Ah. I looked at aphotofolio.com and they advertise a feature called "HTML Mirror Site For SEO" so it looks like there is some tricky behind the scenes stuff to enable google to link into the site. True?

[r.e.]

I just tried to access it on an iPad using the link in the first post.

I got http://ipad.frankpetronio.com with the message that he server could not be found.

Then I tried the second link in the first post (the host, A Photo Folio), did a search for Petronio, and got not found.

[paulr]

I use click-to-pluggin to block Flash. If there's an html-5 version of a site available, the extension should automatically load it, but it's not happening. I get the blank Flash screen. My new year's resolution is to only open a Flash based photo site if I happen to be sleeping with the photographer.

[lbenac]

Looks great. I like the way you are showing the full negative. It works specially well for the Women 1 and 2 gallery. IMHO less so for the Observation gallery.
It is also nice that by clicking next you can jump from the end of one gallery to the other.
BTW there was a few photos that i had not seen before on the forum and that I really really liked (and there were not the most provocative ones) - the lady in the bathtub is one.

Cheers,

Luc

[Frank Petronio]

Thanks for the comments, it's good to know the pluses and minuses....

[Eric Rose]

I think the site looks great. Like that you have limited the number of images in each category to no more than 20. Also the edit is good. Loads fast as well which is a plus.

You can tell you are targeting art/image professionals (buyers not creators) with the look and feel. Well done!

[r.e.]

Just checked out the site on a MacBook 11" Air using wireless. The images load very slowly (in every case, I was watching the percentages as the image loaded). For whatever reason, the images on this site loaded almost instantaneously: http://www.brigittelacombe.com/index.php

By the way, here are more of Lacombe's images, of Meryl Streep, published yesterday on the web site Nowness: http://www.nowness.com/day/2012/1/10/1798/meryl-streep-leading-lady These also loaded much more quickly. Nowness is a relatively recent site owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

[Tom J McDonald]

Frank's pictures are much better.

[cowanw]

The red arrow has an inconsistant function depending on the width of the picture on display.
I also prefer some tone behind text
It took me a while to figure out the thumnails. dumb me
Otherwise it is you to a tee!

[Frank Petronio]

I just tried to access it on an iPad using the link in the first post.

I got http://ipad.frankpetronio.com with the message that he server could not be found.

Then I tried the second link in the first post (the host, A Photo Folio), did a search for Petronio, and got not found.


I use click-to-pluggin to block Flash. If there's an html-5 version of a site available, the extension should automatically load it, but it's not happening. I get the blank Flash screen.

To their credit, they fixed this (I hope) late last night. I think presenting the HTML option as well.


For whatever reason, the images on this site loaded almost instantaneously

Oh I agree. But my images scale and can be viewed on a 30" monitor - which requires significantly larger jpgs than the ones in the Lacombe examples. The download speed is the trade-off, and viewing on an 11" MacBook Air is unfortunately the worst case, since the server can't figure out your screen rez and send smaller versions, like it does automatically with the mobile/tablet versions it auto-senses. In my case, most of my images are 150-300kb each, x 20 = 3-5mb download - ouch!

Thanks Tom - 25% commission coming ;-p

~Sigh~ it isn't perfect and it is ironic because my old site was one of the first W3C standards compliant, when I was in that biz I was big on accessibility. But in the case of approaching photo editors and art buyers, they are all going to be using fast/modern/large/Flash equipped computers to view these types of portfolio sites. None are going to be using XP and IE4 on XGA monitors, and none will be needing visual aids, readers, etc. Believe me, I hate Flash from a web design perspective or when it's poorly done, but for image presentations it does things I can't do otherwise.

The other factor here is that by using A Photo Folio, I got 97% of what I want/need for $1000 versus doing a custom site that might give me 99% for $5-10K. Some of our famous commercial photographers drop $20K on their sites and don't get the capabilities that a service can offer for far less.

This isn't a good solution for the casual user, or someone who needs a shopping cart, or who wants an integrated blog, etc.

[eddie]

the text is too small in the "about" and "print sales"

loads a bit slow.

the pdf portion contains many different images than the rest of your pages

[Mike Anderson]

...In my case, most of my images are 150-300kb each, x 20 = 3-5mb download - ouch!...

The framework could do a simple trick to speed things up in some cases which is to guess what the next image will be and pre-download it. That is if image #15 is selected, once image #15 is loaded and displayed the system will assume image #16 is likely next and begin downloading it.

It wouldn't hurt to tell A Photo Folio that performance is an issue and request they work on this optimization.

[Frank Petronio]

I think it preloads the entire gallery, so the delay is (usually) upfront.

[Peter De Smidt]

I like it. It might be a good idea, though, to have a way to reference an image, perhaps with a title or number. For instance, I really like the 6th image in the One Woman group, the one with a young lady sitting on a bed holding a laptop, but it would be nice to be able to reference it more easily.

[Mike Anderson]

I think it preloads the entire gallery, so the delay is (usually) upfront.

Ah. I quite Chrome and restarted and now your site is faster. It was probably slowed by disk swapping before.

[Eric Rose]

I would ditch the NSFW warning on Tumblr or add it to the other galleries that have titties. Actually on second thought I would just ditch the warning. Your target market will be looking at your site at work so nothing you serve up should be a problem for them.

The rest of the lookie loos can just take there chances on getting caught. I mean really, does anyone really waste their employers money by surfing photo sites at work? :)

Having been in the IT world for over 30 years I can tell you with certainty that your boss knows exactly what sites you surf. Even during your lunch break. And how many times you open up solitaire etc. If you want to smurf during work hours do it on your personal phone. Just make sure you are not connecting through the company wi-fi.

[Mike Anderson]

iPad version is kind of weak.

* Scrolling is very clunky and slow. (I've yet to see a web app with the nice touch scrolling of a native iOS app. photoswipe.com comes close.)
* image pages are not bookmarkable (they don't have a unique URL). You probably know this, but I'd still log it as a bug.
* the film border looks funny on black background - they look good on the white background, but on black it just looks weird.

[Frank Petronio]

iPad version is kind of weak.

* Scrolling is very clunky and slow. (I've yet to see a web app with the nice touch scrolling of a native iOS app. photoswipe.com comes close.)
* image pages are not bookmarkable (they don't have a unique URL). You probably know this, but I'd still log it as a bug.
* the film border looks funny on black background - they look good on the white background, but on black it just looks weird.

Thanks for the good points (and others)

[Harley Goldman]

Nice site, Frank. The gal in the tub is my favorite. Stellar image!!!

It was slow to load, though.

[John NYC]

It was slow to load, though.

Everything loaded instantly for me.

Nice work Frank!

[r.e.]

Oh I agree. But my images scale and can be viewed on a 30" monitor - which requires significantly larger jpgs than the ones in the Lacombe examples. The download speed is the trade-off, and viewing on an 11" MacBook Air is unfortunately the worst case, since the server can't figure out your screen rez and send smaller versions, like it does automatically with the mobile/tablet versions it auto-senses. In my case, most of my images are 150-300kb each, x 20 = 3-5mb download - ouch!

Obviously the right direction if you have canvassed your clients and this is what they want.

Not knowing what your clients are telling you, I do think that sites need to load fast on an iPad or something like a MacBook Air.

I also think that the main change from your old site to the new one is that the new one is much less personal. But if the new site is directed at commercial clients, this not only doesn't matter, but is probably a good thing.

[John Flavell]

Frank:

Everything loaded up fine for me. I'd let it set for a couple of days or a week and then tweak if needed. I think when viewing images simple is always better, and your clean layout is helpful for that.

Mind telling what you're using to digitize those 4x5 negs.

Very nice images, btw.

[Joshua Dunn]

Looked great on a 27" monitor on a Windows 7 based PC.

Great work Frank.

-Joshua

[bdkphoto]

Looks and works very nicely. A nice improvement over your last site, I'm sure it will be good for you.

I was considering Rob's sites too, I ended up going with Mike Hartley at www.bigflannel.com. - large/scalable and mobile versions as well. Launched mine about a month ago. Can't beat the price too ;-)

www.brucekatzphoto.com

[ImSoNegative]

I like it Frank, very nice

[thicktheo]

I also like it, straightforward and simple.

[gth]

Very Nice, I looked at it on my recent Macbook pro and on my old G5 with 23 in screen.
Macbook very fast rendering, old G5 not bad either. The dynamic resizing and the large size of images on a large screen works great and does justice to your photography.

The navigation between thumbnails and images is great, does not require any precise positioning by mouse or touch stroke. Clear red, large floating nav symbols.... like!

Background of thumbnails is last views image... Hmm..can't say I particulary like it, it's a design choice that **could** be distracting, but once you get used to it, it really isn't. You'd have to see alternatives to make that choice.

I'd say one of the better photo display sites. Clean menus, good navigation > Nice site!!

Photography ain't bad either....:cool:

[Frank Petronio]

Thanks everyone!

[William McEwen]

Having been in the IT world for over 30 years...

Eric, is it true that every IT department has more men named Steve than it has females?

[photobymike]

Jeezzz i now have to work on my own website... really good Frank...

[gth]

On the red nav symbols, you might want to increase the area in the centre of the pict where the thumbnail symbol is active. When I first played with it, I did not notice it at first. You display that symbol in something like 20% of the image width and the arrows the rest. You'd expect the arrows to be at the edge and It's good that they are not JUST on the edge. Maybe something like 30%, 40%, 30% would work. Also I think the thumbnail symbol could have the same vertical height as the arrows. AKA bigger.

I am nit-picking of course. I really like that nav system, but that's one optimization you might want to play with.

Also, you don't make much deal about print sales, you might want at least your email address right on that page. Yeah, it's in the menu.... but you know...

More hardcore would be to have a "Buy this print" on each photo display which would kick you over to the buy print page with THAT picture inserted and the info how you do your sales. But maybe you don't want that kind of in-your-face sales presentation...

....just some suggestion riffs...

[Eric Rose]

Eric, is it true that every IT department has more men named Steve than it has females?

Well if any one of them would actually talk rather than grunt, I might have learned their names. But alas ....... You are correct in assuming there is a critical shortage of estrogen in most IT departments. Although in one IT department here in Cowtown they had some Russian gals working. There was great debate on whether they were actually females though. I would not have wanted to piss them off!

[Jan Pedersen]

Awesome site Frank. There's no questions as to who envisioned and created these images. Your large foot print need no signature.
Don't change anything but keep new images coming.