mdude85 Offline Dedicated FM Upload & Sell: Off
|
Your navigation is a little too inconspicuous for my tastes. I am browsing on a 1600/1200 resolution and so the photos take up most of the frame -- the navigation text is almost unreadable.
You also have thumbnails, but again, they are too small to even be useful. I know thumbnails are "in" and obviously a well-known practice, but they are not very effective if you cannot even see what is happening in the thumbnail. They basically become a waste of space and you are better off just having back-and-forth navigational arrows or even numbered boxes. At least that is my opinion, I'm sure others will disagree. A good rule of thumb for me is that if I have to make the thumbnails on my pages smaller than Flickr.com thumbnails (75 x 75), then they are probably too small for most people. Your thumbnails are about 45 x 45, which is too small.
If you are unsure whether you need navigational thumbnails, or if you think arrows are too vague an indicator that there are photos before and after the current photo, then test your page on a novice or ordinary internet user (such as your grandmother). If she cannot navigate the page with your current design, then it's probably too complicated. I can tell from your portfolio that your images are designed to attract a wide range of potential clients. You have to make sure those clients can effectively navigate your page regardless of what their age, experience or background is in using the internet (it would be different if, say, all your clients were advertising agencies because those people are accustomed to browsing pages with a lot of wild and creative navigation styles).
I'm also having a hard time distinguishing between your people, places and commercial work. If I looked at a batch of your commercial photos and they were not labeled as "commercial", I would not even know they were intended for commercial use. Maybe you could include some tearsheets in that section.
You've got images in the "travel" section that seem like they belong in the "places" section and vice-versa. And each section contains images of people even though you have a dedicated "people" section. You need to more carefully choose which images go in what categories.
Your site also seems a little cramped (even though most of the screen is taken up by the image). You need to increase the margins and padding in your graphical elements to bring the viewer's eyes closer to the center of the screen instead of being focused at the edges. Here is a good article you should check out about effectively using white space in your designs:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/whitespace
A few other minor things --
No need to put "Contact Page". Rename to "Contact" or "Contact Me". Also, no need to have a "clear" button on your contact form. "Clear" buttons are outdated. Accessibility studies have shown "Clear" buttons to basically have no value.
On the plus side, I like your large photos. It gives a very dramatic and striking effect.
|