My website is finally finished, tell me what you think?

<p>It's taken me about three weeks to get everything tweaked and one of my eyes started twitching (most likely from looking at a computer screen too long) but it's finally completed. Tell me what you think, design or photo wise. I really appreciate it!</p>

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

<p>Overall I like it. It's clean. The only things I would say are:</p>

<ol>

<li>The font is too small for some people to ready, maybe.</li>

<li>For the blog, the text on the left should be in a non scrolling frame.</li>

<li>If possible, I'd like the titles of each portfolio to be on one line. Or change the leading between lines and give more space.</li>

</ol>

<p>Like your work.</p>

<p>What is the purpose of the site? Do you wish to sell your services? If so there is a devilishly small market for landscape and wildlife photographers. </p>

<p>You mention photojournalism... There is a piece about a music festival which I assume you "covered". There is nothing "music" about those shots.<br>

So here is the hard hit. If you just want to show some of you pics them do what you want.</p>

<p>If you want to sell your services you have a big problem. Photojournalism is about what people do. You have exactly one human face on your site. The pictures of the music festival do not stand alone. They do not tell a story. PJ work supports or tells a story. Even wild-art shots are supported by a cut line. </p>

<p>People mostly buy pictures of people. If you want to do portraits, weddings and such you need to showcase the best of your work in those areas. If you are new and don't have that work then you need to create it. I don't mean to offend but the shots of your mother and aunt's back are a bit off-putting for me. Again you hide faces. There is a "somber" tone to your work for me. Can you put some shots in that make me smile? Some exuberance. </p>

<p>Here is the key. You need to show people what their work might look like not what the work you like to do looks like. The idea is to get the prospective customer to 'put themselves in the picture' you might say. If you want to try and earn a living shooting wildlife and scenic then fine. You hid part of your face on the contact page. While I see what you are doing the purpose of a photo on that page is to make people feel like they know you and like you. Consider that.</p>

<p>Your contact page is OK but you make no sales "pitch" and you do not show any "street" photography in the portfolio which you claim to do.<br>

I agree with Rich that the font is to small. I would also remove the former pictures labeled "account suspended" from the blog. That does not show you in a very good light.</p>

<p>So there it is. Please do not be offended. As I said before, if the purpose of this is to support selling your services it needs to be more carefully considered.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I agree with Rick M for the most part. I would add that your 'blog' isn't a blog, just a series of images, some of which are excellent, but have no text to go with them.</p>

<p>Don't have a blank splash page. Either make the sections big enough to fill the screen or have a photo display. I would go with the photo as my preference, but anything that doesn't leave the initial screen as 85% black space would be better than what you have now.</p>

<h2>Response to My website is finally finished, tell me what you think?</h2>

<p>Thanks for your criticism and feedback.<br>

Rick, As of right now, the website serves just as a place to view my images, but I do believe I'll add an option to purchase photos later. The truth is that my interests lie within doing documentary/photojournalism work and working towards a career in the field, but I really haven't done much in that area yet. I have a few projects in the works, but nothing I've completed yet. I honestly don't have much desire in wildlife or landscape photography, but I'm an avid hiker/outdoorsy person, so my default it becomes what most of my images are, but that's not to say I'm not very proud of some of them. The somber, slightly off putting tones of some of them are definitely intentional. While the images that display that feeling are something that was intentional, that doesn't mean that will be my style of execution for documentary work, because I'll then try to create a more honest and realistic view. But with all other work that I do, it is more about what I prefer, as opposed to what a client might prefer, because after all, I don't think I'm really shooting for client based work. When you say the font is too small, do you mean the font in the menu? Or the blogs? Both? Anyway, I thank you very much for taking the time to thoroughly look through the website and offer your feedback, and I agree with almost all of it. I need to start working more in the fields I desire to be in, work on my bio and photo, and fix those deleted photos. </p>

<p>Les, I think I will take your advice and be a little more descriptive in my blog posts. <br /><br />And Jeff, problem fixed. </p>

<p>One thing that bugs me about the theme that I've picked for my site is that I can't figure out how to add text to individual photos in my portfolio, but hopefully I'll figure out something with that soon.</p>

<p>Again, thanks everyone!</p>

Hi Chris, looks like you and I aren't too far away from each other.

 

A couple things I noticed:

 

I really like a lot of the work.

 

I agree about the small font (the menu on the left of the main page). It's not necessarily the size of the font, but it's a very

delicate serif font at a small size reversed on black—that's a lot working against it. I'm looking at it on a Mac with safari and

that font just kind of falls apart into bumpy, hard-to-read scribbles. I notice that when I drag the window size down to a narrow

width, the responsive breakpoint kicks in and the font changes to a more legible sans-serif. Big, legible type is in fashion right

now; you could probably get away with making it bigger or using a sturdier face.

 

The uneven margin at the top of the page bothers me. I feel like the top of "Christopher" should line up with the top of the

image. It looks a little random as it is.

 

I felt like the list under the heading "Recently;" was a little confusing. It commands a lot of space on the page, the links go to

single image in the case of "Seward to Anchorage" or lists of images like the Coastal California. I don't really understand why

Coastal California parts 1 and 2 aren't just combined as a portfolio. It might simplify things for the user to let them find single

images in the "Single Images" portfolio and look to the blog for fresh groups of photos that don't work in a portfolio. This would

free up the space to simply list the portfolios and let the user dive straight into them from the front page.

 

Some of this seems like wordpress is imposing a blog-like order on things that aren't necessarily blog like. It results in pages

like this: http://christophermcintoshphotography.com/seward-to-anchorage/ that has icons and text in various colors and

typefaces strewn about the page complicating what should be a pretty simple photo display.

 

Wordpress can make really stellar photography sites, but it takes some work. If I were doing this site and didn't want to wrestle

with wordpress, I would strongly consider a system aimed more squarely at photographers. Maybe something like

http://www.squarespace.com/tour/photographers/

 

Good luck, maybe we'll bump into each other around Anchorage.