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Hurst Photography has a new face :)


hurstphotography

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<p>Remember that I am a Nasty Person®. First time I tried to load your site, it hung my browser and pinned the processor to 100%. Not good. Got it to load on the second try, albeit slowly. Music should be off by default--ruins the nice music I've <em>chosen </em>to listen to. Work is fairly undistinguished; galleries load in annoying popups. Why the devil did you chop off the feet of EVERY horse you shot, including a dressage image. Riders want to see their horses with feet.</p>
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<p>Aside from having too much to load, you force music on us. That's a no-no. You never ever force the unexpected on your visitors. The worst thing is, the song starts over with every click. Get rid of it. Prophoto has gone to great lengths to make their template work on smartphones and if yours doesn't work, figure out why. But I'll give you a hint...this image is huge! It's 5.3 meg and 5,184px × 3,456px. Why?<br /><br />http://hurst-photography.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/IMG_0037.jpg<br /><br />All your other images are scaled and range in size from 600k to 1.5 meg. <br />1,574px × 1,049px (scaled to 900px × 600px), 1,852px × 1,234px (scaled to 900px × 600px), 2,352px × 1,568px (scaled to 900px × 600px)<br /><br />Why haven't you made them all 600 x 900<strong> and under 100K?</strong><br /><br />Your first photo of the couple on the beach looks like it should be cropped to have the horizon line horizontal and not dutch like you have it. But, it's a below average photo and should be ditched. Most certainly it shouldn't be the first one we see and gain an impression of your ability.<br /><br />Under "US" you have your bio text in an image. Besides being hard to read, this doesn't parse out in google. I'd change it. One of the most important rules with web design is "consistency is more important than quality". Remain consistent instead of trying to be cool here and there.</p>

<p>Your audience imagines who they are going to hire and what they will look like at thier wedding. So, the bio pic of the girl should be re-done, imo. She looks like she's on the way to the gym and instead should be exchanged for a more professional image. She's attractive, take advantage of it. Sex sells.</p>

<p>You've chosen slide show flash options on this blog. This flash wont work on iPhones and iPads. Although I feel this will be a small market soon (andriod devices are faster, will have market share, and 2.2 plays flash), you should still make your blog iPhone friendly.</p>

<p>It's not well known yet, but slideshowpro.net just released their beta plugin for Word Press and it supports HTML5 and H264 Video it can also automatically resize photos. It's worth the $60.<br /><a href="http://slideshowpro.net/news/archive/2010/12/slideshowpro-director-plugin-for-wordpress-now-available.php/" target="_blank">http://slideshowpro.net/news/archive/2010/12/slideshowpro-director-plugin-for-wordpress-now-available.php/</a></p>

<p>Good luck,</p>

<p>G</p>

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<p>G,<br />Thank you for the input. I never realized that those photos were so large. We resize most to 600x900 but that particular batch would come out all de-saturated and the only quick fix I was able to find was uploading the full size photo. How do you keep the images under 100kb and still retain the quality?<br>

Might I ask <em>how</em> you were able to see all the spcs of the photos? I thought we had th safety feature enabled, or did you just view source?<br>

The couple on the beach is actually <em>us</em> and is a weekly "Photo of the Week" in which we post any particular personal photo that means something to us. We like to interact and share with our readers. It won't be the furst photo anyone sees for long-in fact, we have about a month's worth of posts scheduled to release automatically, so...<br>

I'm aware that flash doesn't work on iphone and ipad (boo on apple for that) but ProPhoto gives the option in those menus to show a lightbox gallery I believe, or just a static image. We weren't too concerned about it, unless those static images aren't working either. </p>

 

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<p>Glad you didn't take it personal. I had a few drinks in me last night as well :)</p>

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<p>How do you keep the images under 100kb and still retain the quality?</p>

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<p>100K is more than enough for 900x600. Try JPG quality setting 4. It looks fine on the web. Becareful of sharpening though. I use one of two methods. Sometimes it's the image processor via Bridge and Photoshop, or I use Lightroom. In the Bridge/Image Processor, you just keep re-running the Processor and setting the JPG quality less and less on your attempts until you are at 100K to 130K for color, and 55K for B&W. Lightroom 3 has a setting now where you can set the max amount in K's and is very helpful.</p>

<p>With prophoto blog template, you have the ability to use this on smartphones and tablets but with your current content, you'd just torture them with your current photo size and music. Tablets are going to be huge in the upcoming year and will be here to stay. Your future clients will be trying to pass around your site via a tablet soon so I'd whip your blog into shape and get a workflow going now.</p>

<p>Might I ask <em>how</em> you were able to see all the spcs of the photos? I thought we had th safety feature enabled, or did you just view source?</p>

<p>There's a few tricks. Firebug is an awesome little extension for firefox that shows what a page is made of and how.</p>

<p>http://getfirebug.com/</p>

<p>But in this case I just used good old Firefox and right-clicked on your blue wallpaper part and "view page info" then clicked on the media tab. It will show you the url address and display your jpgs AND allows you to save them. Savy surfers know this. Watermark your property if you're concerned.</p>

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<p>The couple on the beach is actually <em>us</em> and is a weekly "Photo of the Week" in which we post any particular personal photo that means something to us.</p>

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<p>Who's idea was this and why do you feel it is a good one? Emotional decisions, in marketing and business, are seldom good ones. Considering your area and demographics and market, perhaps put a snap up for a rescue horse on behalf of a non-profit group?</p>

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<p>Glad you didn't take it personal. I had a few drinks in me last night as well :)</p>

 

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<p>No worries. I've learned that in this business, you have to be able to take criticism well and decide for yourself whats going to make you grow. it's tough sometimes to hear an unbiased opinion, but it all helps! </p>

 

 

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<p>Who's idea was this and why do you feel it is a good one? Emotional decisions, in marketing and business, are seldom good ones. Considering your area and demographics and market, perhaps put a snap up for a rescue horse on behalf of a non-profit group?</p>

 

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<p>We've actually been trying to contact horse rescues in Tennessee to do exactly that, and in turn, that would end up being one of our Photo of the Week's per say. It'll always be something different, and it's on a test-drive right now.<br>

I've done a lot of research on blogs in our area and around, and it seems that the little personal touches really make it our own. If people want to know about us, they'll read it. It's a new thing we're trying, but the way we see it, if people don't like us, they won't like our work ethic. We're a fun, fun-loving couple and we want to show the couples that we want to shoot, just that :)</p>

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

<p>Chelsey,<br>

Ditto what has already been said, especially the music. Please turn it off by default. I do like the site. One thing that I noticed is that something is up with your About page. Go directly from the Home page to the About page and the slideshow continues to play at the bottom. I find that distracting. And I don't think that is intentional. Next navigate to the Categories>Romace>Weddings. Then go back to the About page. The slideshow that was playing at the bottom of the About page before is now replaced with the images from the Weddings page. <br>

pat</p>

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  • 4 months later...
<p>MM, the music is a personal choice, I've never had a client say they hated the music, it adds an emotion to the slideshow, and it's pretty easy to turn off. It's not loud or obtrusive, in fact it's pretty quiet. As for the slideshow, the galleries are a work in progress. We'll actually be featuring certain weddings rather than a random gallery, such as the home page slideshow. I would just rather have something on the homepage than an unfinished gallery. As always, a work in progress, but thanks for your input.</p>
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