melanie_kern

<p>Excellent critique and great ideas, Ralph. Thank you!!</p>

<p>That was a fantastic Critique, Lex. Thank you for taking the time to look at the site and for your insight. <br /><br />I will definitely work on site optimization. I miss the days when it was just Netscape or Internet Explorer!<br /><br />The homepage - I recently watched Scott Kelby's show where he was critiqing peoples' sites. He absolutely loved that scrolling home page thing that I'm using. But most people I've spoken to seem not to like it, so i think I will remove it.<br /><br />I consider myself just an enthusiastic amateur. If I see an image that i like, I immediately dive into that new kind of photography and try to do it myself (infrared, still life, high speed water drop photography, snowflakes, etc). But I tend to bore easily and move on quickly to the next challenge. It leaves me with a lot of images that I'm happy with, but it also leaves me with the hodge-podge that you mentioned. I don't really specialize in anything. Nor do i think I would want to. But how should I handle this website-wise? If I had multiple websites, I would need to maintain them and i don't get any traffic on my current site, so it's hard for me to think that i would get traffic on multiple sites. (I completely agree with your hodge podge assessment btw.)<br /><br />I agree about the b/w category and i'll remove it.<br /><br />The 'imagine' page is a catch-all for all of the images that don't fit in the other specific categories. I'm not sure how to fix this issue without deleting the images altogether, and i'm not sure I want to do that just yet.<br /><br />I make, on average, one sale a year (yes, you read that right). Just enough to pay to maintain the site. It's a chicken/egg scenario for me. Why put time into setting up sales if I'm not getting any...or am I not getting any because my sales aren't set up properly? Sigh...Do people at my amateur level even sell images? <br /><br />Again, Lex, thanks for the fantastic critique. I loved it!<br /><br />Melanie<br /><br /><br /></p>

Thank you! It's funny, I saw a webcast that Scott Kelby gave recently about website design and just loved that scrolling homepage. That was why I added it. But I've had more people complain about it than not, so I think I'll remove it. I'm not sure how to fix the web address issue. If you type in mkfphotos.com it will redirect you to spiffypix.com. I guess I have to swap it. Have spiffypix redirect to MKF photos. My head explodes just thinking about trying to do that. Thanks do much for the criticism and kind words!

Great website. Nice layout that flows well. Not a lot of clutter. Very streamlined. Nice job!

i recently redesigned my Zenfolio site and would love some brutal honest feedback concerning layout, font, ease of use, etc. Thank you!! <p><a href="http://mkfphotos.com">http://mkfphotos.com</a>

To avoid light spilling onto the background (black velvet in this case), could I simply move the background further away from the subject?

Ah ha! That was one of the things I read in the lighting book I mentioned above. That completely makes sense. Thank you!

Wow I have sure come to the right place. I've been trying to figure out this lighting for almost a year. Good point about the light source being below the camera, and also good point about it not being diffused, necessarily. Also, the point about being close to subject=fall off. That's very helpful. She really gives no real hints about her lighting set ups. Believe me, I have looked. Michael Mowery, could you go into a little more detail about your last sentence? Regarding the flash angle? I'm not following that. I purchased The book Light Science and Magic recently, as it came highly recommended. It's very scientific and technical and unfortunately my brain does not process that way. If you show me how to do something, I can recreate it instantly. But ask me to read a text book and learn? Very difficult for me. In case anyone is interested, my poor imitations of her work can be seen here. I'm just not even close. But I'm going to keep trying. Thanks again to everyone for their great advice! Http://mkfphotos.com/flora

hi - I'm new to the group and I hope I'm posting this in the correct category. I usually am able to figure out lighting for different circumstances but I'm having trouble with this one. I'm looking to find out how this photographer is creating this light fall off on the flowers in her images. I'm trying to see if it's directional lighting but it seems to be coming from different angles. It almost looks like scanography but I know that it isn't. She's got detail in the shadows yet the shadows are not harsh. It reminds me of Flemish lighting. Can anyone help me figure out how the photographer achieves this lighting? I've tried modifiers, flags, etc but I'm still having trouble. Thanks! https://500px.com/magdaindigo Melanie :)