I asked some of you about the feminine looking logo, so after 2 years I put it to rest. I decided on a simple logo one that prints well and easy to recognize. Let me know whay ya'll think...

Check out the about me, since that is what was confusing people. Ya'll might get a good laugh out of it.

Blog : http://studiophenomblog.squarespace.com/

Website: http://www.studiophenom.com/

Been on for a total of 2 minutes, so I'll say the 2 things that jumped right out at me..

1. The main splash page is obviously at a set size, because the "laughter" image has been stretched to fit, client suddenly looks to have gained 20lbs, I'd suggest doing manual crops to avoid that.

2. Calendar - great idea, but, unless this is just a test and you've not populated it yet, it's quite bare, I went to August, only one taken date, I'm not sure if this might make a bad impression on potentials.

As always YMMV

Chris

I like the Info and FAQ sections.....funny story about fainting. Actually, the whole site is pretty cool and your personality comes across well. You may want to correct the spelling of "FINAO" in the album slideshow.

I'd get rid of the calendar section too....at least until you've got more weekends filled.

Yeah I need to up date the calendar. Good catch

Hey photodude. I really like the site. It seems sincere.
+1 on laughter though

I seem to have a similar issue regarding optimizing images for that site. I saw the picture you posted in June's best I think of the overlaid couple walking up and kissing. It seemed really sharp there but then on the site it isn't. I can't seem to figure out how to "fit" the image and have it as sharp as it is on my computer screen or another viewer...eg zenfolio.

Maybe someone can enlighten us.

I'm going to resize all of the home page pictures and add keywords.

I stopped looking when I heard music playing. I also didn't see any controls to turn off the music, but found invisible ones in the lower right corner of the screen, which most people wouldn't know to look for. Only found them by my cursor changing when hovering over that spot.

#1 - the images have been stretched.

#2 - "say all i need" - do you know what this song is really about? not really wedding appropriate.

stickonatree wrote:
#1 - the images have been stretched.

#2 - "say all i need" - do you know what this song is really about? not really wedding appropriate.

I know what it's really about.. but most people don't. They think he's sing about a woman.

Couldn't get past trying to turn off that horrible song (sorry but I'm probably not alone).

If you upload your pictures to PhotoBiz's full screen templates at 1500 x 865 pixels, you shouldn't be getting any distortion.

That's what I resized them too.

PhotoDude79 wrote:
stickonatree wrote:
#1 - the images have been stretched.

#2 - "say all i need" - do you know what this song is really about? not really wedding appropriate.

I know what it's really about.. but most people don't. They think he's sing about a woman.

Cool! You know what the song is "really" about. So what about all the prospective brides?

Ack terrible song and COPYRIGHTED.

ETA: also your phenom logo is on the top layer when it should be below your floats such as your about me.

PD79,

I never saw the previous (feminine?) logo ... so I can't comment on whether the current one is a significant improvement or not. It's ok, I guess.. though I'm not crazy about the italics on the "Photography", or that "stylish, modern" appears to be part of the logo but isn't contained by the brackets.

If you really want to hear what I think... then keep reading, but you're not going to like it.

Let me start by pointing out that I am personally not linking my WWW at this time because IMHO "MY" site sux. So I'm not making these comments from a position of "mine is better'.

That being said:

1. There are spelling and grammar errors in various places on the site to name a couple just from your Rocking Albums section:

a. Kiss Mini's should be Kiss Minis

b. Simplisity is not in fact a word. Simplicity is.

c. neither is Distintive though I guess that's a Distincitive way of spelling ... Distinctive

d. migetized is not a word... I'm pretty sure neither is midgetized but at least that made-up word would use midget as it's root... miget is not a word. Miniaturized would be an actual word that works in that context.

e. I know what your looking for ... <--- no you don't ... I'm looking for decently edited copy. ... that should read "I know what you're looking for"

f. companys -> companies

g. Back to that "I know what you're looking for" thing... you then say "stylish, and yet showcase the special moments in your life" ... that doesn't make much sense to me. Usually the Something YET Something construct is used to combine otherwise seemingly contrasting things. So for instance you would write "Modern yet timeless" or "Strong yet gentle" ... even if you got the sentence structure corrected I don't think the idea of wanting something stylish and wanting something that showcases the special moments in one's life are contrasting

2. I'm a very fast reader, and I can't read some of your slides as they flash past. This is most noticeable on pages where the text describes the images... for instance where you write about your Kiss Minis I can either look at the minis or I can read the text. In practice I was getting distressed by not being able to do both. The slide with "I know what youre looking for" I actually challenged myself to speed-read it and could only get to "are" in the second to last row before it would move on.

3. Your logo sometimes shows up over white were it's partially unreadable, some other times it clashes with your captions... for instance on the splash page when the {Love} one shows up with the guy in the yellow shirt {Love} and {Phenom} are partially overlapped.

4. I don't know what potential clients think when they read blogs, whether they expect proper spelling/grammar or not (chances are many of them wouldn't even notice?), but I subscribe to a number of blogs and while informal tone is always welcome grammatical/spelling errors are not common. You have quite a few of both just in the first posting I read. You might want to consider finding an English major who would proofread in exchange for portraits or something.

5. I'm also not particularly crazy about the square running around the frame transition

Now finally... for a positive comment:

Your wife is beautiful

lisy78 wrote:
PD79,

I never saw the previous (feminine?) logo ... so I can't comment on whether the current one is a significant improvement or not. It's ok, I guess.. though I'm not crazy about the italics on the "Photography", or that "stylish, modern" appears to be part of the logo but isn't contained by the brackets.

If you really want to hear what I think... then keep reading, but you're not going to like it.

Let me start by pointing out that I am personally not linking my WWW at this time because IMHO "MY" site sux. So I'm not making these comments from a position of "mine is better'.

That being said:

1. There are spelling and grammar errors in various places on the site to name a couple just from your Rocking Albums section:

a. Kiss Mini's should be Kiss Minis

b. Simplisity is not in fact a word. Simplicity is.

c. neither is Distintive though I guess that's a Distincitive way of spelling ... Distinctive

d. migetized is not a word... I'm pretty sure neither is midgetized but at least that made-up word would use midget as it's root... miget is not a word. Miniaturized would be an actual word that works in that context.

e. I know what your looking for ... <--- no you don't ... I'm looking for decently edited copy. ... that should read "I know what you're looking for"

f. companys -> companies

g. Back to that "I know what you're looking for" thing... you then say "stylish, and yet showcase the special moments in your life" ... that doesn't make much sense to me. Usually the Something YET Something construct is used to combine otherwise seemingly contrasting things. So for instance you would write "Modern yet timeless" or "Strong yet gentle" ... even if you got the sentence structure corrected I don't think the idea of wanting something stylish and wanting something that showcases the special moments in one's life are contrasting

2. I'm a very fast reader, and I can't read some of your slides as they flash past. This is most noticeable on pages where the text describes the images... for instance where you write about your Kiss Minis I can either look at the minis or I can read the text. In practice I was getting distressed by not being able to do both. The slide with "I know what youre looking for" I actually challenged myself to speed-read it and could only get to "are" in the second to last row before it would move on.

3. Your logo sometimes shows up over white were it's partially unreadable, some other times it clashes with your captions... for instance on the splash page when the {Love} one shows up with the guy in the yellow shirt {Love} and {Phenom} are partially overlapped.

4. I don't know what potential clients think when they read blogs, whether they expect proper spelling/grammar or not (chances are many of them wouldn't even notice?), but I subscribe to a number of blogs and while informal tone is always welcome grammatical/spelling errors are not common. You have quite a few of both just in the first posting I read. You might want to consider finding an English major who would proofread in exchange for portraits or something.

5. I'm also not particularly crazy about the square running around the frame transition

Now finally... for a positive comment:

Your wife is beautiful

Finally a critique thats useful..... I really appreciate you taking the time to tell me about the grammatical errors. Those are things I need to change right away...... I type kind of fast and should proofread a lot better. I'm going through it right now and making changes. Again I really appreciate the help.

Going back over everything... I understand how dumb all of the typos and grammatical errors made me look. I just need to slow down and proofread a hell of a lot better.

PhotoDude79 wrote:
Going back over everything... I understand how dumb all of the typos and grammatical errors made me look. I just need to slow down and proofread a hell of a lot better.

I'm sure glad you took my comments and ran with them rather than running after me.

Oh, and my apologies for including the grammatical stuff in the posting. I meant to PM you about those... many people get really defensive about spelling/grammar errors so I really should have been more sensitive about that. Thankfully (for me anyway) you seem to have my same "I know what I do right, now tell me what I did wrong" attitude, so I lucked out this one time

lisy78 wrote:
PhotoDude79 wrote:
Going back over everything... I understand how dumb all of the typos and grammatical errors made me look. I just need to slow down and proofread a hell of a lot better.

I'm sure glad you took my comments and ran with them rather than running after me.

Oh, and my apologies for including the grammatical stuff in the posting. I meant to PM you about those... many people get really defensive about spelling/grammar errors so I really should have been more sensitive about that. Thankfully (for me anyway) you seem to have my same "I know what I do right, now tell me what I did wrong" attitude, so I lucked out this one time

You told me straight up what is wrong and I appreciate that. No beating around the bush, just straight to the point.

PhotoDude79 wrote:
Finally a critique thats useful..... I really appreciate you taking the time to tell me about the grammatical errors. Those are things I need to change right away...... I type kind of fast and should proofread a lot better. I'm going through it right now and making changes. Again I really appreciate the help.

So the crits about the copyright infringement were not useful?

.. dude I bought the song. Am I'm not talking about Itunes.

PhotoDude79 wrote:
.. dude I bought the song. Am I'm not talking about Itunes.

Then you spent a lot of money a bad song and licensing. You should at least give people an easy option to turn it off.

Opinion is a opinion.... and yawls isn't neither here nor there. I had people they hate the song (ya'll) and I had people tell me they love the song (brides). So who am I going to listen to. But I will change the color of the music feature.

PhotoDude79 wrote:
Opinion is a opinion.... and yawls isn't neither here nor there. I had people they hate the song (ya'll) and I had people tell me they love the song (brides). So who am I going to listen to. But I will change the color of the music feature.

The number of people who leave your website because there is no music, will be far less than those who leave because you have music that they do not enjoy.

I really wanted music on my site, but after viewing enough websites that had it, I came to the conclusion that people probably did not share my taste in music in the same way I did not care for the music on the websites that I was viewing.

PhotoDude79 wrote:
.. dude I bought the song. Am I'm not talking about Itunes.


Moving along now nothing to see here.... Glad to hear it!

Paul Ket wrote:
PhotoDude79 wrote:
Opinion is a opinion.... and yawls isn't neither here nor there. I had people they hate the song (ya'll) and I had people tell me they love the song (brides). So who am I going to listen to. But I will change the color of the music feature.

The number of people who leave your website because there is no music, will be far less than those who leave because you have music that they do not enjoy.

I really wanted music on my site, but after viewing enough websites that had it, I came to the conclusion that people probably did not share my taste in music in the same way I did not care for the music on the websites that I was viewing.

The above is my point exactly. Well worded. I've never left a Web site because it DIDN'T have music, but I have left sites that DID.