Topic: Howdy, I'm realtively new here and would love some feedback on my new website

[greenstphotography]

Howdy all, I'm Andrew.  While I signed on here quite some time ago, I kinda forgot I had an account here.  I've posted a few times, but never really said hi.  Anyway after a year of work on the TOYCAM book (see separate thread) and working on a new website I figure to be checking in here more often.  I'd love some feedback on the site.  So if you have some time let me know what you think:

www.greenstphotography.com

[Paul Mitchell]

Love the website Andrew and must say that have only briefly looked at your work (have bookmarked and will spend more time looking later) but it looks amazing!

Paul

[Miller]

Sweet, though the 'galleries' drop down menu can be tempermental I've found on my laptop...

Rgds

Mlr

[Suzi Livingstone]

Hi Andrew 

Really nice website, I found easy to navigate and really love the 'scapes gallery.. some fantastic shots there.. I also love the Toycam book, still working my way through it slowly but its wonderful..

[eyecaramba]

Hey Andrew.  Some great work in my first pass.  I think the thumbnails are a little jumpy over on the right.  I feel like, especially with the mixed format runs of images (some square, some horizontal, some 35mmm) that the automated jump is a little confusing.  Sometimes it jumps over an image or does not quite get out of the larger thumbnails...

Small complaint though really, and all it does it sort of make me think about the thumbnails a little "Did I see that one yet?"  And this is not discouraging in a big way.  I will look over it some more when I get back from the carpool run.  Good work!

[astrobeck]

Hi Andrew, nice stuff!

The ones that look High-def and contrasty are especially interesting.

As others have said, it's a bit jumpy but it's still great and easy enough to keep sorted.

Well done!
Becky

[greenstphotography]

Thanks all for the comments!

@Miller - would you mind telling me what browser you were using that you noticed a prob with the Gallery drop down menu.  And if you could describe what was happening also.  This is a comment I haven't ever received so I'm cursious.

@everyone else.  Yeah I have noticed the issue with the Thumbnail scroll bar for the galleries.  So here is what is happening, when you select an image from the scroll bar, the page is reloaded with the selected image in the main viewer and the scroll bar is re-positioned such that the selected image is now second from top in the scroll bar.  The slower you connection the more clunky this appears.  The "clunkiness" is also made more apparent since the thumbnails are all different sizes as a result of me wanting to show the whole image in the thumbnail.

So I have 3 options and if anyone wants to chime in with your thoughts I'd appreciate it.

Option 1: Have the web designer remove the auto reposition of the scroll bar.  I almost did this but then I was viewing the website on my iphone and scroll bars are impossible to use, so in that case the auto reposition actually allowed me to view all the galleries (though on the iphone the webpage is even more clunky, but at least useable with effort).

Option 2: is to resize all the thumbnails so they are exactly the same size.  This would mean the thumbnails don't show the entire image.  But the auto repositon actually flows much more cleanly.

Option 3: leave as is and realize that nothing is perfect

[Suzi Livingstone]

Options 2 or 3 seem sensible to me 

[Miller]

Tried it again... If I go into 'nudes' from galleries  and then select another image, when I then hover over galleries again the drop down appears but as I move my mouse to select it vanashises on me... Internet Explorer 8 sir...

Rgds

Mlr

[LT]

Hi Andrew

thanks for the intro.  A few thoughts on your site:

1.  really enjoyed flicking through your work  - I think your street work is the most arresting of the lot on display.  I dont think your Nude work is as strong.
2. I'm not keen on the wider format/ landscape aligned pictures abutting the navigation bar on the right and others not - it looks a bit clunky to me.  I think a consistent black border around the pics woud look much nicer. As it is, the navigation bar becomes confused with the image itself and detracts.
3.  I didn't really like being linked to flickr when clicking on the new work galleries.  I'd prefer to be warned if I am about to access a 3rd party site.

all in all, it works very nicely on my 13" macbookpro.  OSX 10.6.4 : Google Chrome 6.0.472.63

One other problem:

In Safari 5.0.2, the dropdown galleries menu is very touchy. If I hover over the galleries link, the menu appear, then as soon as I move the cursor down to select a link, the menu disappears about 9 times out of 10. This only seems to happen when on the home page.

[sapata]

Hi Andrew, 

I really like your website, I think is very efficient and has very strong images as well. The pictures loads very quick indeed which is obvioulsy good, I also like the "News/Accolades" section as well.

[gregor]

nice work.  The scroll bar and background color of the scrolling content is distracting and pulls the eye away from the work.  There's free code for a number of javaScript scrollers out there on the www that you may want to consider replacing the native browser scroll bar with.

Other than that looks good.

[Mike (happyforest)]

Andrew

This is a good site, with good strong images.

I agree with Leon that I would like to see some space between the image and the thumbnail banner on the right hand side and the jump out to flickr but this may be more because I find flickr frustrating.  However because I don't have a flickr account, the self within project tells me I have to login to view this project which I would suggest that you ought to warn people about before redirecting them. Don't ask me how though.

With reference to the proposed options:

I have seen the auto-repositioning of the scroll bar done where the selected image is highlighted either by grey out the other images of changing the border colour. It is not obvious as first that this jumping is the selected picture being brought to the middle of the thumbnail bar and to me this is why I think others are saying this is jumping.  This is also more noticeable when the thumbnail format changes.

In thumbnail images I personally prefer to see the whole picture, in some case where they have been cropped to fit the same format the image is not always shown at it's best and for me sometimes if the thumbnail does not attract then I may not look at his image.  Having said that the format change is worse with some of your wider images and these I think could be cropped successfully. So there may be a compromise here.

Mike

[greenstphotography]

Thanks for all the comments, lots to mull over.  Always interesting to hear different view points.  Between all of you and all of my other friends and colleagues I can basically say that every aspect of site has been simultaneously praised and declared difficult or distracting.  That and every gallery has been declared my strongest or weakest, funny how much personal taste comes into play there.  I guess it actually may be a good thing that I have a broad range of photographic interests, I'm bound to have something most people like.

I went ahead and added "(Flickr)" to the current project galleries to indicate you are going to be redirected. 

I understand the comments on the green color, but that is part of the brand of GreenSt so it stays. It also ties into the layout and color scheme of the blog and my business cards.

I'm going to play around with the size of the thumbnails and see what works.  The web designer actually played with a bunch of different codes for the look of the scroll, but we couldn't find anything that really worked perfectly across all web browsers so we stuck with the default.

And Thanks Miller for the description of the gallery drop down issue.

[Lino]

Hello Andrew,

The 'scapes bit is pretty good. I specially liked the one that looks like a flea circus on the beach.

Also, mazinger z!

The only thing that i would do is that i add buttons to skip to the next image and to go backwards on the galleries. I think that it's easier than to scroll down and click to the next (and it might solve the problem with the auto-scrolling, since you could turn it off or just ignore it). But that's just me, and i'm lazy.