I think the format works well but I find it a bit jarring to have your blog entries and your instructional entries intermixed. I would prefer a split between the two, perhaps via a top-level entry.
--- Denise
Those SmugMug tutorials are just part of the blog. I do not want to keep them separately.
tomnovy I wonder if it is a good idea to have the blog articles with rather dark photos on a dark background...it makes for some depressing impression almost as if it was a blog of a funeral home. I know the photos get a little lighter in color, when one hovers over them, but I wonder if the grey overlay should rather be realized by a frame around the photo (instead of removing the grey overlay add a frame in some not too bright but visible color around the photo)?
tomnovy I wonder if it is a good idea to have the blog articles with rather dark photos on a dark background...it makes for some depressing impression almost as if it was a blog of a funeral home. I know the photos get a little lighter in color, when one hovers over them, but I wonder if the grey overlay should rather be realized by a frame around the photo (instead of removing the grey overlay add a frame in some not too bright but visible color around the photo)?
Good luck
Lille Ulven
Thanks for the tip. I like this dark feeling of the page.
The logo on your home page is much too large. Even on a large monitor your logo and menu take up half of the available vertical space. On my phone I have to scroll to see photos. Are you trying to showcase your logo or your photos?
The entries on both your CLIENTS and EVENTS pages are covered with a haze that disappears when I hover over the image. I understand that might be a current fad, but my reaction when seeing that hazy look it to close the page. (Yes, I know that's a personal reaction but I find it hard to believe that I am alone in this behavior. Have you checked with any of your customers or watched anyone navigate your site?
Why are you still using the stock smugmug photo for your contact page? That does not give a professional appearance to your site.
I agree with Ferguson's comments on your rates page. I don't see any rates there; I would rename the page if it were my site.
Have you considered adding a bio page, something about you that might click with your potential clients?
--- Denise
Thanks for all your feedback. I'll look to incorporate some of your suggestions.
The reason my logo is so large is because that was the only way I could find to have it display proportionally correct on mobile devices, since I find that 99% of users visit my site on their mobile devices.
You also validated many things I already was thinking in my head, so that's good to have it come from someone else!
It is the fade in effect of all elements on homepage and about page. Contact page has it too - but I am not fully happy with the contact page. It takes long time for the Wufoo form to load.
It is the fade in effect of all elements on homepage and about page. Contact page has it too - but I am not fully happy with the contact page. It takes long time for the Wufoo form to load.
Are you talking about the navigation on your home page?
Not seeing anything specific on your About page other than your navigation.
The fade-ins look fine to me. What I do find a little distracting on the home page is the hover behavior on the menu. I'd eliminate the change in field width and just have the color change. As it is, a non-selected entry is becoming larger when you hover on the next entry, which is a little confusing.
The reason my logo is so large is because that was the only way I could find to have it display proportionally correct on mobile devices, since I find that 99% of users visit my site on their mobile devices.
You can use CSS to render different sizes on different width or type devices.
Here's an example of one from mine (truncated a bit to fit better, there's a bunch more to the right for each size range).
.sm-page-widget-nav-toplink, .yui3-menu-lable, .LEF_headlines { font-size: larger; }
@media only screen and (max-width: 2000px) { .sm-page-widget-nav-toplink, .yui3-menu-lable, .LEF_headlines { font-size: initial; } }
@media only screen and (max-width: 1290px) { .sm-page-widget-nav-toplink, .yui3-menu-lable, .LEF_headlines { font-size: small; } }
@media only screen and (max-width: 900px) { .sm-page-widget-nav-toplink, .yui3-menu-lable, .LEF_headlines { font-size: smaller; } }
@media only screen and (max-width: 670px) { .sm-page-widget-nav-toplink, .yui3-menu-lable, .LEF_headlines { font-size: smaller; }}
tomnovy Your about page is fading in on my Mac EL Capitan 10.11.3 in Safari 9.0.3 (fading also works in Chrome and FF on the same machine), but it looks a little bit more like a "site is building up a little slow due to slow internet connection" than a "fade in" and I wonder how it would look like on a slower connection as I am currently on 100Mbits.
For your contact page though, I wonder if a different "wording" would be more productive. As of now your heading is "Contact Tomasz" after that you are talking about "Message to the Photographer and in the end you're asking "do you want me to contact you back" - it might work a little better if you changed your heading to something like "Contact me, Tomasz, the photographer" that way everybody would be able to understand that "me", "the photographer" and "Tomasz" are one person and you could use them as synonyms. But the way you are phrasing it now, it can be mistaken as if the photographer is someone else than "me" and "Tomasz"...
smitty91 the first thing I am noticing is that I have to click many times before I get to see the very first photo...you will most likely lose people on the way thinking that there is nothing more to come.
The second thing I found (and that's probably even worse...) when someone clicked through to the bottom of the folders the visitor might encounter an empty gallery (CSFD 2014 -> Wildfire Mitigation) and after clicking so far down the folder-structure be leaving for good.
Sorry, it is far too late here, so I need to have a closer look tomorrow or so, to come with more feedback, these are just the first things that hit me.
The first thing that jumped out at me was that I couldn't click on your logo on the home page to get into the site. That would be a natural addition rather than forcing your viewer to look to the bottom of the page for the click to enter.
I agree with Lille about the levels of folders. I would prefer not to need to click so many times before I entered a gallery.
There is a lag in opening your pages where the keywords pop up first before being replaced by the images representing the folders. While the keywords may be useful, I don't believe most viewers to your site will choose to navigate using keywords as a first choice. Why not make the keywords available via a choice as opposed to always showing them?
Why haven't you replaced the stock photo on the contact page with a photo of yourself?
smitty91 the first thing I am noticing is that I have to click many times before I get to see the very first photo...you will most likely lose people on the way thinking that there is nothing more to come.
The second thing I found (and that's probably even worse...) when someone clicked through to the bottom of the folders the visitor might encounter an empty gallery (CSFD 2014 -> Wildfire Mitigation) and after clicking so far down the folder-structure be leaving for good.
Sorry, it is far too late here, so I need to have a closer look tomorrow or so, to come with more feedback, these are just the first things that hit me.
Thanks for the feedback. The main reason why there are so many clicks is due to how I have everything sorted. Not sure at this point how to reorganize to allow a less number of clicks to a gallery.
This site is mainly for my fire photography and that revolves around incidents. So I do a master gallery for each year, then break it own based on type of incident (structure fires, traffic accidents, brush fires, etc.) I suppose I could just have the year and then the incident and take out the middle level of incident types....?
As for the gallery that you referenced, CSFD 2014 >>> WIldfire Mitigation, there are images in that. Not sure why they weren't showing up on your end?
The first thing that jumped out at me was that I couldn't click on your logo on the home page to get into the site. That would be a natural addition rather than forcing your viewer to look to the bottom of the page for the click to enter.
I agree with Lille about the levels of folders. I would prefer not to need to click so many times before I entered a gallery.
There is a lag in opening your pages where the keywords pop up first before being replaced by the images representing the folders. While the keywords may be useful, I don't believe most viewers to your site will choose to navigate using keywords as a first choice. Why not make the keywords available via a choice as opposed to always showing them?
Why haven't you replaced the stock photo on the contact page with a photo of yourself?
--- Denise
Thanks Denise for the comments. I do recall, when working on the transfer from the old SmugMug site to the new one, working on the logo being able to come right into the site. Quite honestly, I don't recall why I chose not to link it. But that's an easy fix.
As for the Keywords, I'm in the process of going back through the older galleries and adding keywords. So I will have more of them and because of that I added a link to the menu just for the keywords. I didn't think they were distracting to most viewers but can see where they may be.
Most of my "clientele" are the firefighters themselves. I've posted on my facebook page where they can either do a search with their name to find images of them or they can find their name in the keywords. I usually post a direct link to the latest gallery on my facebook page so for the most part, flks don't have to click a bunch of times to get to the images.
But with that said, it's nice to have feedback from non-fire types that have been used to my site. As I mentioned in my reply to Lille, the number of clicks to the images is due to my organizing. Will have to come up with some different organization to limit the number of clicks....
EDIT: Forgot to add that the reason for the stock image on my contact page is because I was/am trying to "hide" from an ex girlfriend. I'm sure she knows it's my site, but I didn't want her to confirm it was by seeing my picture. Lame excuse. lol
smitty91 the only way I see why I cannot see a single photo in your gallery here would be that all your photos are marked as hidden. (And yes, I even checked your code for that page, and there is exactly one img-tag and that's for your icon - which again fits with what I see if I hide a photo from my test gallery and delete my cookies.)
If you go in as a logged in user you might be able to see them, if you delete your smug mug cookies and follow the link you might see the same empty gallery I am seeing
For your organization: Older folders for example I found one from 2008 which subfolders that then only have one gallery could probably remove that one subfolder and just include the gallery instead?
Another idea might be (assuming I read your organization correct as year - type - area - date) to go:
type of fire -> area -> year_gallery
so you would have a folder structure like this:
folder: bush_fire subfolder: El Paso galleries: 2015_whatDoInotKnow, 2013_hereIam, 2008_whatWeHadAFire?
This way you would eliminate an entire level and make it more searchable to non-firefighters of the area, too (in my opinion).
@all since I have recently made some changes to my website, I wouldn't mind some feedback either
smitty91 the only way I see why I cannot see a single photo in your gallery here would be that all your photos are marked as hidden. (And yes, I even checked your code for that page, and there is exactly one img-tag and that's for your icon - which again fits with what I see if I hide a photo from my test gallery and delete my cookies.)
If you go in as a logged in user you might be able to see them, if you delete your smug mug cookies and follow the link you might see the same empty gallery I am seeing
For your organization: Older folders for example I found one from 2008 which subfolders that then only have one gallery could probably remove that one subfolder and just include the gallery instead?
Another idea might be (assuming I read your organization correct as year - type - area - date) to go:
type of fire -> area -> year_gallery
so you would have a folder structure like this:
folder: bush_fire subfolder: El Paso galleries: 2015_whatDoInotKnow, 2013_hereIam, 2008_whatWeHadAFire?
This way you would eliminate an entire level and make it more searchable to non-firefighters of the area, too (in my opinion).
@all since I have recently made some changes to my website, I wouldn't mind some feedback either
Ah... Lille, that gallery is hidden. Just realized that. So that is why you aren't seeing those. But I'm curious as to why that would show up enough to be able to look in it?
For the organization... I'll have to play around with that. I understand your thinking and it just may work.
That explains a little bit, smitty91. Could it be that you have it set on "anyone with a link" and "smug mug searchable = yes"? That would possibly explain why I come as far as I do, as my "anyone with a link" galleries don't show up on a "usual" browse page as far as I can see.
OK. Made some modifications. Clickable logo-check. Reorganized a bit (took out mid level folders) - check. I suppose now I will put my mug on the contact me page. Sigh. lol
You have a good start but I do have a couple of comments / suggestions.
When a viewer is looking at a gallery there is no indication of the gallery they are viewing. I would suggest adding either a breadcrumb or a title content element.
I'm not a fan of smugmug-style galleries with the thumbs below the photo. My instinct to move to the next photo is to click the arrow next to the thumbs. Unfortunately that moves the viewer to the next page, not the next photo. Many photos are skipped.
You have added a slideshow button to your galleries but not to your portfolio. Why not add one there as well?
This is a personal preference; perhaps your target audience doesn't have this issue. I have never understood using a hover over a photo to place a film across the photo. That doesn't highlight the photo and doesn't entice me to click into the gallery; it usually sends me away. This behavior can be seen on your browse page.
Have you looked at your site on a phone? Your logo and menu uses all of the vertical space available on my phone - I need to scroll down to see any photos. In addition, you have 2 menus, one that collapses for mobile and one that doesn't. Why not use a single menu?
You have a good start but I do have a couple of comments / suggestions.
When a viewer is looking at a gallery there is no indication of the gallery they are viewing. I would suggest adding either a breadcrumb or a title content element.
I'm not a fan of smugmug-style galleries with the thumbs below the photo. My instinct to move to the next photo is to click the arrow next to the thumbs. Unfortunately that moves the viewer to the next page, not the next photo. Many photos are skipped.
You have added a slideshow button to your galleries but not to your portfolio. Why not add one there as well?
This is a personal preference; perhaps your target audience doesn't have this issue. I have never understood using a hover over a photo to place a film across the photo. That doesn't highlight the photo and doesn't entice me to click into the gallery; it usually sends me away. This behavior can be seen on your browse page.
Have you looked at your site on a phone? Your logo and menu uses all of the vertical space available on my phone - I need to scroll down to see any photos. In addition, you have 2 menus, one that collapses for mobile and one that doesn't. Why not use a single menu?
--- Denise
Thank you for the feedback Denise, I have made some changes
Comments
Those SmugMug tutorials are just part of the blog. I do not want to keep them separately.
Thanks for the feedback Denise
Good luck
Lille Ulven
Thanks for the tip. I like this dark feeling of the page.
Thanks for all your feedback. I'll look to incorporate some of your suggestions.
The reason my logo is so large is because that was the only way I could find to have it display proportionally correct on mobile devices, since I find that 99% of users visit my site on their mobile devices.
You also validated many things I already was thinking in my head, so that's good to have it come from someone else!
I have been implementing some animations on my SmugMug site - take a look: http://www.photom.me/ and the about page: http://www.photom.me/About-me
To distracting? OK?
Must not be too distracting because I'm not seeing any animations.
Images in the Backcountry
My SmugMug Customizations | Adding CSS to Your Site | SEO for the Photographer | Locate Your Page/Widget Number | SmugMug Help Desk
It is the fade in effect of all elements on homepage and about page. Contact page has it too - but I am not fully happy with the contact page. It takes long time for the Wufoo form to load.
Are you talking about the navigation on your home page?
Not seeing anything specific on your About page other than your navigation.
Images in the Backcountry
My SmugMug Customizations | Adding CSS to Your Site | SEO for the Photographer | Locate Your Page/Widget Number | SmugMug Help Desk
This is strange - every element should fade in - background, logo, navigation and footer. Which browser are you using?
You can use CSS to render different sizes on different width or type devices.
Here's an example of one from mine (truncated a bit to fit better, there's a bunch more to the right for each size range).
.sm-page-widget-nav-toplink, .yui3-menu-lable, .LEF_headlines { font-size: larger; } @media only screen and (max-width: 2000px) { .sm-page-widget-nav-toplink, .yui3-menu-lable, .LEF_headlines { font-size: initial; } } @media only screen and (max-width: 1290px) { .sm-page-widget-nav-toplink, .yui3-menu-lable, .LEF_headlines { font-size: small; } } @media only screen and (max-width: 900px) { .sm-page-widget-nav-toplink, .yui3-menu-lable, .LEF_headlines { font-size: smaller; } } @media only screen and (max-width: 670px) { .sm-page-widget-nav-toplink, .yui3-menu-lable, .LEF_headlines { font-size: smaller; }}The only fade on your About page is the navigation. I'm still using an old XP running the latest Firefox.
Images in the Backcountry
My SmugMug Customizations | Adding CSS to Your Site | SEO for the Photographer | Locate Your Page/Widget Number | SmugMug Help Desk
Thanks in advance.
Steve
http://www.sdsfirephotos.com
For your contact page though, I wonder if a different "wording" would be more productive. As of now your heading is "Contact Tomasz" after that you are talking about "Message to the Photographer and in the end you're asking "do you want me to contact you back" - it might work a little better if you changed your heading to something like "Contact me, Tomasz, the photographer" that way everybody would be able to understand that "me", "the photographer" and "Tomasz" are one person and you could use them as synonyms. But the way you are phrasing it now, it can be mistaken as if the photographer is someone else than "me" and "Tomasz"...
The second thing I found (and that's probably even worse...) when someone clicked through to the bottom of the folders the visitor might encounter an empty gallery (CSFD 2014 -> Wildfire Mitigation) and after clicking so far down the folder-structure be leaving for good.
Sorry, it is far too late here, so I need to have a closer look tomorrow or so, to come with more feedback, these are just the first things that hit me.
I agree with Lille about the levels of folders. I would prefer not to need to click so many times before I entered a gallery.
There is a lag in opening your pages where the keywords pop up first before being replaced by the images representing the folders. While the keywords may be useful, I don't believe most viewers to your site will choose to navigate using keywords as a first choice. Why not make the keywords available via a choice as opposed to always showing them?
Why haven't you replaced the stock photo on the contact page with a photo of yourself?
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Thanks for the feedback. The main reason why there are so many clicks is due to how I have everything sorted. Not sure at this point how to reorganize to allow a less number of clicks to a gallery.
This site is mainly for my fire photography and that revolves around incidents. So I do a master gallery for each year, then break it own based on type of incident (structure fires, traffic accidents, brush fires, etc.) I suppose I could just have the year and then the incident and take out the middle level of incident types....?
As for the gallery that you referenced, CSFD 2014 >>> WIldfire Mitigation, there are images in that. Not sure why they weren't showing up on your end?
Thanks Denise for the comments. I do recall, when working on the transfer from the old SmugMug site to the new one, working on the logo being able to come right into the site. Quite honestly, I don't recall why I chose not to link it. But that's an easy fix.
As for the Keywords, I'm in the process of going back through the older galleries and adding keywords. So I will have more of them and because of that I added a link to the menu just for the keywords. I didn't think they were distracting to most viewers but can see where they may be.
Most of my "clientele" are the firefighters themselves. I've posted on my facebook page where they can either do a search with their name to find images of them or they can find their name in the keywords. I usually post a direct link to the latest gallery on my facebook page so for the most part, flks don't have to click a bunch of times to get to the images.
But with that said, it's nice to have feedback from non-fire types that have been used to my site. As I mentioned in my reply to Lille, the number of clicks to the images is due to my organizing. Will have to come up with some different organization to limit the number of clicks....
EDIT: Forgot to add that the reason for the stock image on my contact page is because I was/am trying to "hide" from an ex girlfriend. I'm sure she knows it's my site, but I didn't want her to confirm it was by seeing my picture. Lame excuse. lol
If you go in as a logged in user you might be able to see them, if you delete your smug mug cookies and follow the link you might see the same empty gallery I am seeing
For your organization: Older folders for example I found one from 2008 which subfolders that then only have one gallery could probably remove that one subfolder and just include the gallery instead?
Another idea might be (assuming I read your organization correct as year - type - area - date) to go:
type of fire -> area -> year_gallery
so you would have a folder structure like this:
folder: bush_fire subfolder: El Paso galleries: 2015_whatDoInotKnow, 2013_hereIam, 2008_whatWeHadAFire?
This way you would eliminate an entire level and make it more searchable to non-firefighters of the area, too (in my opinion).
@all since I have recently made some changes to my website, I wouldn't mind some feedback either
Ah... Lille, that gallery is hidden. Just realized that. So that is why you aren't seeing those. But I'm curious as to why that would show up enough to be able to look in it?
For the organization... I'll have to play around with that. I understand your thinking and it just may work.
http://www.matthewmcewanphoto.com
Thanks!
Website: www.matthewmcewanphoto.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/MatthewMcEwanPhoto
Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/chewy311
When a viewer is looking at a gallery there is no indication of the gallery they are viewing. I would suggest adding either a breadcrumb or a title content element.
I'm not a fan of smugmug-style galleries with the thumbs below the photo. My instinct to move to the next photo is to click the arrow next to the thumbs. Unfortunately that moves the viewer to the next page, not the next photo. Many photos are skipped.
You have added a slideshow button to your galleries but not to your portfolio. Why not add one there as well?
This is a personal preference; perhaps your target audience doesn't have this issue. I have never understood using a hover over a photo to place a film across the photo. That doesn't highlight the photo and doesn't entice me to click into the gallery; it usually sends me away. This behavior can be seen on your browse page.
Have you looked at your site on a phone? Your logo and menu uses all of the vertical space available on my phone - I need to scroll down to see any photos. In addition, you have 2 menus, one that collapses for mobile and one that doesn't. Why not use a single menu?
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Thank you for the feedback Denise, I have made some changes
Website: www.matthewmcewanphoto.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/MatthewMcEwanPhoto
Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/chewy311
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
I have created a fixed HAMBURGER MENU on my site - still working on it, but so far it looks good - please check it out:
http://www.photom.me
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
Check it on mobile :} It is quite smooth on mobile too.