Intro, new site

Lint

By way of introducing myself, I'm moving my site custom Wordpress site over to Smugmug, mostly because maintaining custom code has become more than I'm prepared to deal with right now. Although I occasionally take commissions I'm mostly retired and the work you'll see is mostly street and
largely for my own enjoyment.

The new Smugmug site isn't quite finished but I thought here might be a good place to give it a dry run, see what people think.

https://kimaldis.smugmug.com

Richard

Very nice work, Kim, especially the street stuff. You site is clean and easy to navigate. I do wonder a bit about only offering slide-show views. It has the advantage of showing each pic in the best possible way, but the visitor has no idea whether there are a dozen pics or three hundred and may get impatient and close the show, missing something that might have appealed more later on. I usually prefer to scan a collage, opening full views when I'm interested, and if it all looks great, then starting a slideshow.

denisegoldberg

Your work is very nice and your site is clean and simple.

I have a problem with only having slideshow view available to peruse your photos. I prefer to decide myself which photos I want to linger over, and while I will occasionally watch a slideshow I want that to be at my request. I usually feel pretty frustrated if slideshow is the only way to see the photos. Why not choose a style that gives the viewer control, then add a slideshow button to the gallery for those who want to view your photos as a slideshow?

Lint

I've always liked slideshow displays because they focus visitors on the image without distraction. The point is taken, though. I've made some changes and looking at it I think you're both right, particularly with large images in the collage view.

Looking at it, I'd quite like to see the first image in the grid display as full width. I don't suppose there's a way to do that?

Richard

@Lint said:
Looking at it, I'd quite like to see the first image in the grid display as full width. I don't suppose there's a way to do that?

Sort of. Go into Gallery Settings and set Cover Photo to yes, then select the image you want. It works fine if the original is in panoramic aspect, but if not it will crop and you may not like the results. You might have to try a number of images to get one that works.

I like the changes you made.