Yet another website critique request...

[b_christopher]

Hello all,

 

Please check out my new site. Just recently got it live. Feedback, critique,

comments are certainly welcome. If you feel you're in a giving mood, please

follow the Google seach link to my site and help me with my Google ranking. If

you're not feeling it, it's still okay :-| direct link is provided.

Oh, don't miss the video promo while you're there.

 

Thanks,

 

B Christopher Lee

 

<p>

 

<a href="http://www.google.com/search?

hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=%22B+Christopher+Lee+Photo+Video%

22&spell=1">Google search result (clickit clickit clickit) :-)

 

<p>

 

<a href="http://www.bchristopherlee.com">Direct

[tiffany__fee__hazekamp]

I LOVE the simplicity of the website, and I love that it is easy to navigate. These are two key factors in a successful website. I think you could stand to increase your font size, because I was struggling to read it, especially your logo. The logo is key, it's your brand. It has to be simple to read and understand, and I was having trouble with it.

A note on the galleries, something that was beat into my head by a good many photographers- less is more. In your first gallery, and spilling into your second gallery, a lot of the portraits were very similar; same lighting, focal length, cropping, you get the idea. Your portfolio is only as strong as your weakest image, so I'd recommend keeping only the strongest image in a series of very similar images and dump the rest. I had to learn to do the same thing myself- it's not always easy getting rid of images you're attached to, but I try to remind myself that nobody else is attached to the images the way I am, so I try to only show the best.

 

The video- I love Sandstorm first of all. Great choice. It really gives the video an energy, gets you excited to watch it. The timing of the image change to the music is fantastic. I don't really know what the long chunk of travel footage does for the video though, it seems irrelevant. If you are able to shorten the song to omit that section without losing the flow of the video, I think it would strengthen it immensely.

 

Hope this excedingly long post helps! :)

~Tiff

[mtreinik]

I don't love the requirement of flash, and the moving blobs in the background make it hard to look at a photo. I didn't get past the main page, since I found no navigation, just a photo of a woman standing on a sunny street.

[tuanhbui]

The good: Your pictures stand out - the site is not overdesigned. Navigation is simple and direct.

 

The bad: Same as Mikko says - moving blobs distract from your photos, which should be the only focus here. Your logotype is barely legible. Your range seems to be quite wide (portraits, headshots, environmental portraits) yet i can only select from "Gallery 1" and "Gallery 2" - a very artificial division. Why can't I select between galleries of different types of photos?

 

I also agree with Tiff's comments above to the effect that your portfolio is only as strong as its weakest image.

 

You've got a good start here, you just need some finishing touches and your site will be set :)

 

Tuan

[michelle a.]

Very hard to read the text, it's so small, and when I tried to enlarge it, it didn't work on Mozilla FireFox.... my monitor is set to 1280x1024 if that helps. I really like your images though!

[szrimaging]

Hmmm....where to begin.

 

I like the idea, simple, easy to navigate. However, the navigation is in a spot not commonly associated with navigation on the net, makes it harder for users to find it. People have a short attention span, don't make them hunt.

 

Second, you can't link into specific images, or at least Galleries. The lack of thumbnails also makes it slower to browse your images. Like I said, users have short attention spans, cater to that.

 

Third, the video is A) hard to find, and B) unable to be controlled. Just saying promo on the link, set above the other links, does not tell me its video. In fact, I was thinking some kind of promotional photography, or a pdf brochure. And I would like player controls on the video player. So you can see where you are in the video, and jump around in it.

 

From the looks of your work, which is good, you are trying to get commercial contracts. The agents, etc who browse your site are going to want to do it quickly, so user navigation is a big key.

[b_christopher]

Thanks to all who checked in on the website and all who've commented. I've taken all of it to heart. One note on the video an it's controls: When I create a video page and test it, I can see the controls. Then I upload and the controls disappear. I've tried saving in different versions of Flash and methods of stream, without luck. If anyone knows a solution to this mystery in Flash, please advise. Thanks again. Chris

[szrimaging]

Yeah, if you used one of the built in skins for flash video, they deploy in a separate file (like steel.swf). Try changing the save location of your movie and saving it again, or look in the current directory on your hard drive for a .swf file that looks like the skin you used.

 

On another note, someone mentioned not being able to resize the text on your page. This once again is a fault of flash. It is not easily possible (may be possible through some actionscript) to resize the text based on the text size of the browser.

[b_christopher]

Zach,

Thank you for the pointer regarding the separate swf file. That did the trick :-)