actually I would like you to critique...

[thenimirra]

my first website. I'm still learning how to do this, but I took someone's suggestion from the forum to join smugmug. I'm learning some HTML so I can customize my page, but it's still a work in progress.

What do you think? Does it look clean enough for a homepage or is it too busy?

www.picture-yourworld.com

Thanks for your help in advance! Critiques are welcome...I want people to try to view it the way potential customers would.

[wulf]

At a glance, I would say that it doesn't quite seem to hold together yet. Perhaps too many categories, and the approach to the titles and thumbnails is also not consistent. For example, some titles are very informal (eg. "Just Plain Cool Shots") and others technical (eg. "Fauna"). Variation in title length also leads to very large patches of empty space, so I would be inclined to go with short, simple, single words (and leave the miscellaneous "cool" category to the end or even drop it until you have more than one picture to go in there).

Wulf

[thenimirra]

thank you Wulf! I appreciate your time and your thoughts.

[Flippant]

i think the key is to communicate the photographer's style immediately. the categories and navigation are important, but secondary. The first thing a user should see upon visiting is a 'signature' photo that makes them say "wow!". alot of other elements can be used to communicate the aesthetic, especially font. if the true mission of the site is to get more clients, you have to SELL the PHOTOS. you may want to get rid of some of the categories like self-portrait. i guess i am assuming alot. i could be wrong about the aim of the site.

[thenimirra]

I deleted some galleries and moved some images into already existing ones. I changed out the Floral/Fauna to "In Nature" so I can add both flowers and wildlife in that category.

I was told by others that the self-portrait made them laugh and drew them into the site. But perhaps you are right. It's hard to create a tone for this since I do have a sense of humor hence the "You better work!" on the Portraits one....maybe I could put that humor in the captions instead....

[WooD]

If it were me, I'd go into control panel, and set it up to not show large, or original print sizes. If your not going to water mark your pics, which is a one click deal in smugmug, you should at least check the protect box so people cant right click on your images, and save them to disk.

Just a thought.

[wulf]

It is looking better already. Two more twists that would be worth considering:

1. Use consistently sized thumbnails (even if it means creating cropped versions of your favourite images to do it). Take a screen shot and do a quick mock up to figure out whether that looks better or worse to you.

2. Red and green text? It looks a bit garish; a more stylish look would be darker and lighter tones of the same colour or two complementary colours. I can suggest some sites that help pick colour schemes if you would like.

Wulf

[Nicole]

Originally Posted by wulf

1. Use consistently sized thumbnails (even if it means creating cropped versions of your favourite images to do it). Take a screen shot and do a quick mock up to figure out whether that looks better or worse to you.

2. Red and green text? It looks a bit garish; a more stylish look would be darker and lighter tones of the same colour or two complementary colours. I can suggest some sites that help pick colour schemes if you would like.

Agree with both statements.

[thenimirra]

thanks for the tip Wulf....I was able to make some changes! I think it looks more cohesive now....except I wish I knew how to change the font to make it more snazzier....

[wulf]

It is definitely improving. Have you been taking screenshots of each version? If not, it might be worth starting - it is already a much more professional looking site.

When you talk about a snazzier font, do you mean for the labels for the sections? I would be inclined to leave that. Adding the code for a fancy font should be easy but there is a very narrow range of choices that you can be sure virtually all of your visitors will have and getting round that (using graphics) introduces other concerns (not least it is much more time-consuming to update).

I would suggest that you put the copyright notice at the bottom into the same font used elsewhere - it looks a bit jarring that it suddenly swaps into a serif based font.

Wulf