http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site- An entire Lightstalkers thread via RSS/XML. en-us Hello all, I have recently updated my site and would be grateful for your feedback. If anybody has the time, your opinions would be very much appreciated. www.jameschance.com A couple of key points... I had to re-tone all of my images as they were originally toned on an uncalibrated monitor. This should be fixed now, so I am interested to hear how they are looking on various screens. Also, the portfolio section... I'm interested to hear opinions on my image choices (this is perhaps more important with the single images). Thanks, James Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:56:41 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site- Color tone looks good on a Toshiba Tecra laptop. Loading slightly, just slightly a bit too slow. Or better say, I would like to see it marginally faster, to better chain pictures. Mongolie is fine. Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:42:33 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100567 Thanks Daniel. Yeah, the loading is weird, it seems to fluctuate... I noticed it was slow when I checked. I guess this is my hosting as it isn't always like this?... hmmm?... Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:18:45 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100575 One strange thing to me: to have the same series and images in the "gallery" and in the "portfolio" sections. I am not crazy with having to roll over images to get the captions. Takes my attention away from the slideshow and the images. Not crazy about having a section combining "commercial" and "art", which don't seem to fit, in my opinion. I like the veteran series. Tough issue. Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:43:43 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100577 Hey James, I didnt find it slow at all. the above guys made some good comments. I like tha fact that you aint used thumbnails and it is not heavily flashed up... Good luck zak Sun, 11 Nov 2007 23:30:25 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100586 Looks great, the colors are fantastic now. Immediate load on my connection. Ditto re: Captions Not crazy about the sound. Some glitches when I clicked Portfolio from the opening page it went to Roger Martinez and I had to click the menu again to get the Portfolio. On Singles, in the portfolio the first one comes up faded and when you rollover captions it fades even more. Then turns up later down the line. As for choices not sure about the following singles in Portfolio: 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30 I think you have stronger images elsewhere. Sun, 11 Nov 2007 23:59:04 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100588 i love the site - very simple, i like simple, sort of rare these days. i like the images too, especially the more recent stuff like casuality of war. for some reason i've seen a couple of project about PTSD of iraq vets lately and i like your version a lot :) what would i like to see personaly on your site? well, i have a slow connection here now and i would like to see some preloading there, so i can leave it to preload for a minute or two and then view it smoothly. and secondly i would like to see a thumbnails option, i sort of missed it in portfolio - i woudl like to have the option to have a 'birds-eye-view' of the images and to have to choice to skip to a certain one at any time. And the portfolio? I would personally not have an 'intro' caption image for every couple of images... it's a portfolio it should flow... the intro is appropriate for individual galleries. peace :) Mon, 12 Nov 2007 00:17:38 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100590 Thanks for the input guys! All very much appreciated! Regarding the captions rollover... This seemed like the most efficient approach to me. I don't like having the captions permanently visible as they can be distracting and you don't always want to read them. Clicking on a separate button seems more hassle than a rollover. Is there another option? Baptiste, My idea of the portfolio section is that if a visitor doesn't have the time or the interest in navigating through the gallery—which is pretty large—they can go straight to this. I see the gallery as a kind of archive and the portfolio as... well, as my portfolio. Basically, this is my current portfolio, online... If I have a portfolio request and they are happy to view digital files I can point them there . Yes, it means that some stuff is doubled up, but I see them as very separate areas in the site. I'm not sure of a better way to deal with this. Angela, You remember the site before. I'm very pleased the colours are correct now! I used the faded "singles" slide to separate these images from the previous stories. It is kind of weird that the image pops up again later. The options would be to have the first image (roger martinez) faded with the "singles" title over it then into the actual image, or to use an image for the title slide that doesn't appear in the singles at all. I would love to hear which images you do think are stronger elsewhere in the site, its always tough editing yourself. Peter, Thanks for the input. Sadly the site is a modified template so there is little room for development... Unless I want to start throwing money at it (nope!). There is the possibility of having the intro info in an extended caption in the first image of each story, but as you are forced to click through each image one-by-one due to the design of the site, I feel there needs to be some sort of break between stories/sections to avoid confusion. Thanks again! Everyones opinions are very useful! Mon, 12 Nov 2007 04:14:08 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100605 Any other opinions on image choices etc. (i guess rather than site design/navigation as I am kind of stuck with what I have here) very much appreciated! Cheers James Tue, 13 Nov 2007 02:13:50 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100797 James, present your portfolio/website to DAH and JN while in BKK. Continue the TRAUMA story in the nightclubs there.... Tue, 13 Nov 2007 02:31:21 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100802 The images load WAY to slow! It seems that your site doesen't have preloading...? I loose interest before having seen 3 images in a series. Other than that it is a nice, clean site with focus on the impirtant thing: the images. Great colors! A genereal question: Are there photograpers out there who DONT calibrate their monitors..? Hard to belive! Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:55:26 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100880 i don't calibrate mine, mine is old and shitty anyways. the way i do it is that i upload some images and then for the next couple of days i see them on a spectrum of monitors and settings and this gives me an idea of how people out there see my images. so i sort of calibrate my images instead of my monitor... but then on the other hand 99% of my stuff is B&W and thus i don't have to deal with the color, just to tonality :) Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:22:07 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100885 A few people have raised the slow image load. I'm thinking my image files are too large. I increased the size when I updated the site to give me better image quality. I followed some guidelines in an old resources post here on LS. The images are 600 x 400 px @ 100 dpi with a .jpeg compression of 10. The file sizes are usually between 150-200 kb. Is this the problem? Are they too large? Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:05:16 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100890 first off, monitors at least the VGA ones display images in 72dpi a higher dpi si still displayed as 72dpi. The images on my site are 100-150kb each so that's not the major difference and yet they upload much faster. I think you might want to check with your hosting provider if they can offer you a higher transfer speed, maybe your are sharing speed with other clients and that might be your problem. try uploading your site at a different free location and see if that helps. i host with a service provider in slovakia www.domains.sk their site is in english too (english flag upper left hand corner) and they provide excellen speed and storrage for an excellen price. and if relacating your site dosen't help than the problem might be in the processing of the flash applications that you have in the template, try swiching to a different template. i, too didn't finish wathing any of your photos coz they were too slow and i got impatient and left. Tue, 13 Nov 2007 18:47:20 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100912 ".too slow...impatient and left"... Bad, bad, bad! I will certainly be looking into speeding things up! I realise that the standard is 72dpi, but I read in the post that I referred to in my last message, that screens are now shifting to 100dpi?... hence the change. I will however check out my host and see if they can ramp things up too! If not i will probably just compress the images is bit more. Thanks for the input again Peter! Wed, 14 Nov 2007 01:57:08 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/looking-for-feedback-updated-site-#100966