please critique my website (i made it myself) v2.0

<p><a href="http://www.vaugeoisphotography.com">www.vaugeoisphotography.com</a> <br>

Thank you everyone who critiqued my site the first time round. I have made many changes. The most important i think is taking your advice and removing the copyright symbols on the pictures. I have gotten rid of the buttons and used just a text interface. I have fixed the navigation issues for i believe all major browsers. And basically shrunk the site a bit. I eventually plan on organizing the gallery into categories but i dont have enough photos right now on the site for that (and some that are there will prob come down). <br>

Please give me your advice on anything you think can still be tinkered with. Thank you <br>

- Christope<br>

ps please include the browser you are using and if its internet explorer the version </p>

<p>My biggest pet peeve is when somebody links a full-size image for a thumbnail. Your gallery navigation does that. For example, the picture of a bird with a berry in its mouth (which is a nice picture) is 500x402 pixels, and you're loading that full size to use as 75x50 pixels, which is both smaller and a different aspect ratio (so it squishes it). On your bio page, the picture of you is 1545x1024, and you're using it at 250x150, again changing its aspect ratio. Using pictures that are larger than the HTML you're using is bad for loading times, too. If you don't want to go through the hassle of cropping them, try just using <a href="http://code.google.com/p/timthumb/">timthumb</a>!</p>

<p>Also, if a picture is untitled, I would recommend leaving out a title altogether, rather than saying "Untitled."</p>

<p>Other than that, I like it a lot better than before.</p>

<p>On the bio page, there is a reference to a picture on the left; that picture is above; check those text references to the photos.</p>

<p>Earlier, someone suggested using the same font families: it's common to use sans-serif fonts for headlines, but serif fonts for body copy, the text of the story. Like, if you look at photo.net, they use that pattern. Many newspapers and magazines do, also.</p>

<p>I see you stepped up to the style sheets, which is probably good for you in the long run.</p>

<p>I think the contacts page would do well to state an email address in visible type: you can find a way to get another email address if you don't want to give out the personal one you use all the time. By using the "MAILTO" function associated with hyperlinks, you can set up a quick hyperlink that would open up the user's email client. Showing the email address gives them more of a chance to make up their mind how they want to contact you.</p>

<p>I saw you had a question about the browsers. The differences are often in what they count as the beginning point for measuring distances.</p>

<ul>

<li>Internet Explorer will cut to a shorter distance, horizontally and vertically.</li>

<li>Safari will have about normal horizontal and vertical distance measurements, by pixel.</li>

<li>Firefox will have about normal horizontal distance measurements, but make its text a touch longer vertically.</li>

</ul>

<p>These differences have to do with the baseline of the measurement. Like, where does the browser start counting distance? On the very edge pixel of a figure, or does it start counting on the first row/column of pixels beyond? Then, as you have multiple figures on a page, these differences add up.</p>

<p>To avoid these troubles, if you find your distances start getting within 25 pixels of each other (this box stops here; another box opens up 10 pixels later), there's an overlap hazard. There's more to that, but, a rule of thumb.</p>

<p>There is still a lot of styling info in the HTML. It'll be easier for you to revise later if you kick as much of that info as possible into the CSS. The first ones are a pain, but later on, it'll go better. </p>

<p>Just a couple of small things Christophe,<br>

I could be wrong, but I couldn't find anywhere on your site where it reveals your location. People viewing photographers sites are generally interested in where the photographer is located, especially if they wish to hire them!<br>

Also, someone randomly stumbling across your site would not know if you were male or female. On your Bio page you say it's you in the photo with your partner, which means either person in the photo could be you. I would maybe suggest signing your name somewhere so people know who they may be contacting.<br>

Not big deals, just my 2c worth :-)</p>

<p>Thank you everyone again for you help. I updated the bio to correct the side the picture is on and which one i am. i added an email contact on the contact page. Should i put up my location in my bio or contact or both?<br>

I will get around to resizing the thumbs and dealing with that just havent had the time yet. The font i use is tahoma which doesnt have serif. is this a problem? should i change fonts? </p>

<p>You don't have to change fonts if you don't want to. Yet, more and more people are using sans-serif fonts in web pages. </p>

<p>One of the approaches that you can try is to use the CSS to style the headline functions. H1-H6 are predetermined categories, but you can style them for your web page. Also, you can set up some font styles in your CSS under whatever name you want. </p>

<p>At the W3Cschools:<br>

http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_font.asp</p>

<p>I really like the new layout with the navigation buttons on the side.<br>

Bio - I know writhing a bio was a painful week long process for me. DPS has a great article about it:<br>

http://digital-photography-school.com/6-tips-for-writing-an-artist’s-statement<br>

Im using Safari 4.0.5 and when I go through your pictures the screen jumps - I think because the longer pictures force it to scroll. Flip between the "Color of Peppers" and "Sea Nettle" for an example.<br>

Im a proponent of putting large images up. Maybe I am naive but I figure I will lose more sales to people not seeing my work and liking than ones seeing it and stealing it. <br>

Great pics BTW :)</p>

<p>Rob</p>

<p>sorry i use windows so i havent been able to look at how the site looks on a mac platform. Someone gave me a tool so hopefully i can tinker and have the site looking right for mac users. A bout the larger photos i was thinking about a compromise of sorts. Leaving the pictures the size they are now so people can quickly scroll through and the all the photos. And then putting in a way to click on the photo and open a new window with a larger photo. any thoughts?</p>

<p>Check the website in Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. Getting a page to look okay in all three puts you at the lowest common denominator sometimes.</p>

<p>http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=41252</p>