Your thoughts please...

Antwan · Mar 29, 2015

So, Just incase my photography goes anywhere and to tidy up my blog a little bit I have created my self a new website for all my photography gumff (and a welcome distraction from simplifying surds!)

www.3peaksphotography.co.uk

I'll hold my hand up any day and say I'm on L plates when it come to my photography but what do you think to the site? I have tried to keep it 'clean' as apparently that's what there supposed to be like?

Please be kind and remember to put a smiley after telling me its crap!

graham · Mar 29, 2015

Not bad. Just one comment, on your 'about' page you have described yourself as being in the

grey area between the armature and semi-pro level

The comment is that you should get all your text proof checked. I am afraid that it is off-putting to find silly mistakes in text.

Duncan S · Mar 29, 2015

Not bad...

I was in a similar position a few years ago.
I had a few commercially successful exhibitions and it looked like I might be able to make a living from something I loved.
The advice was to give up on all aspects of photography except the one that was going to support the business, which was sensible.
But I couldn't do it, and ultimately decided to stop trying to monetise my work; I have a day job which covers the bills so can afford to do this.
I still do paid work, but only take jobs I want to do.
Since then my photography has changed for the better.
Life is good.

So - apart from that cautionary tale.
Follow your heart.
Duncan

Inferus · Mar 29, 2015

A Wordpress site is always easy enough to tweak if needs be. I like clean, other people seem happy with excess - each to their own I guess, you can't please everyone. I always work on the principle of do what's right for you and see if anyone moans about something, if they do then take it on board and alter it or figure out a compromise!

Some nice photographs, keep up the good work.
One thing that struck me straight away looking at the different sections was the font. I'm on a laptop with a paltry 1600x900 display and to be honest I found it awkward reading certain parts of the site. It looks like the same font has been used but in certain places it appears small and in others it's small but in a bold type - "Landscape and Architecture" was the easiest to read of the pages whereas "Cave" and "Wildlife" were awkward to read (at least to me they were). HTH.. :doubt:

Antwan · Mar 29, 2015

Cheers for looking.

That font was recommended by a designer at work, I though it looked a bit rubbish but put it down to my 9 year old laptop.

Duncan - I know what you mean about going down one route.

Lots of spellings have come to light too...

Roger W · Mar 30, 2015

Never trust a Microsoft spellchequer!

Bottlebank · Mar 30, 2015

Looks good - although I found the font a bit hard to read as well. It works for headings but not text - for me!

Roger W · Mar 30, 2015

Had the chance to look at the site now. Some great photos. But that small grey font is very hard to read, even with my 18" monitor

ah147 · Mar 30, 2015

Big thumbs up for me. But yes, maybe a slightly larger/more contrasting font would be easier to read whilst playing with the clean look a bit.

On another note, if I took pictures like that I'd be very happy.

damo8604 · Mar 30, 2015

looks great on my 28 inch widescreen monitor 8)

I agree the font isn't the nicest (even on my monitor I had to squint) but nice photos

Love the "will work for food" bit.............

Mike Hopley · Mar 30, 2015

The photos are fantastic.

I particularly like the owl taking off. That one is spine-tingling good.

The website itself looks clean and professional. As others have mentioned the Teko font looks sharp for headings, but is too blocky at small sizes to be readable in body text. You could complement it with something humanist/geometric like Roboto, or maybe Ubuntu.

Since we're in nitpicky typo mode:

who?s main passion lies in Cave photography

...should be "whose".

I?ll never stage a shot a try to pass it off

...could be "and" or "to". "And" is more natural-sounding here.

and think its really poor form

..."it's" with apostrophe.

along with the practice of posing dead insects,

Posing? Maybe "planting" or more clearly, "attracting them with".

Your events page is missing some capital letters and full stops.

Back to design: on the home page, the "next / previous image" arrows could use a hover state. At the moment it's a bit unclear what you're clicking on -- I actually went to the "cave photography" page when I wanted "next image".

Anyway, good job, love the photos, and the website does look nice.

dudley bug · Mar 30, 2015

I feel a more consistent cropping size for the photos would help the layout.
Certainly having photos that sit side by side being the same height would avoid any awkward breaks in the layout.

kay · Mar 30, 2015

ah147 said:
Big thumbs up for me. But yes, maybe a slightly larger/more contrasting font would be easier to read whilst playing with the clean look a bit.

On another note, if I took pictures like that I'd be very happy.

Agreed with all this except - I like the font. I find the lack of contrast restful on the eyes. Maybe it just means I should turn the contrast on my screen down a bit?

Has anyone picked on "your life in there hands" [their] yet?

My SO also liked the "will work for food"

grahams · Mar 30, 2015

Quite a good looking site that needs a bit of font tweeking and sizing of the shots.

You have an enormous number of HTML errors on the index page (haven't checked other pages) which might cause display problems for some browsers and could hinder the Google crawler bot/page ranking.

http://validator.w3.org/ is your friend. Submit each page on your site to find the line number of each error and for hints for correction. A similar validator exists for CSS if you're using them - haven't used it myself though.

Good luck with the site.

Mike Hopley · Mar 30, 2015

kay said:
Agreed with all this except - I like the font. I find the lack of contrast restful on the eyes. Maybe it just means I should turn the contrast on my screen down a bit?

Maybe, but more likely it's the dark grey colour (not the font) that is restful.

100% contrast (pure black on pure white) can be pretty harsh, but is quite common. Dark grey text or an off-white background can be better.

http://validator.w3.org/ is your friend.

This is good advice but could benefit with some context.

Some validator errors indicate problems that should be fixed. Others really are irrelevant and in some circumstances harmful (for example, depending on the validator, it may flag ARIA roles as errors).

About 10 years ago it used to be all the rage to prove your web design chops with 100% validating HTML and CSS. People even had natty little badges, like you get for tying knots as a scout.

Nowadays (professional) designers/developers have calmed down and see the validators as tools. The goal is to write HTML and CSS that isn't broken, as opposed to getting the badge.

Inferus · Mar 30, 2015

grahams said:
You have an enormous number of HTML errors on the index page (haven't checked other pages) which might cause display problems for some browsers and could hinder the Google crawler bot/page ranking.

http://validator.w3.org/ is your friend. Submit each page on your site to find the line number of each error and for hints for correction. A similar validator exists for CSS if you're using them - haven't used it myself though.

Given that it's a Wordpress based site the pages will be generated by WP, so it could be the "theme" files or a plugin causing errors to be generated. Whilst it is possible to edit the files that generate the pages it would be foolish to do so unless you know enough about HTML, CSS and PHP and of course have no intention of updating the theme or plugins etc. A fair portion of websites will throw out errors when checked at W3C and I can't say I've noticed any problems even using different browsers (even the big companies have multiple errors on their sites).

grahams · Mar 30, 2015

Inferus said:
grahams said:

You have an enormous number of HTML errors on the index page (haven't checked other pages) which might cause display problems for some browsers and could hinder the Google crawler bot/page ranking.

http://validator.w3.org/ is your friend. Submit each page on your site to find the line number of each error and for hints for correction. A similar validator exists for CSS if you're using them - haven't used it myself though.

Click to expand...

Given that it's a Wordpress based site the pages will be generated by WP, so it could be the "theme" files or a plugin causing errors to be generated. Whilst it is possible to edit the files that generate the pages it would be foolish to do so unless you know enough about HTML, CSS and PHP and of course have no intention of updating the theme or plugins etc. A fair portion of websites will throw out errors when checked at W3C and I can't say I've noticed any problems even using different browsers (even the big companies have multiple errors on their sites).

OK, hadn't realised that. Best ignore my comment then.

Antwan · Mar 30, 2015

Back in the day grahams I actually had a verified badge! I'm a bit lazier now but still capable of of a bit of programming.

I have got a bit of a job list now... Thanks for the font suggestions, I'm in the middle of trying to standardise the way I work with my images from download to archive, and deciding on 'web size' is still on the to-do.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Especially grammar and spelling, very much appreciated

Mike Hopley · Mar 31, 2015

Antwan said:
Back in the day grahams I actually had a verified badge! I'm a bit lazier now but still capable of of a bit of programming.

Hey, me too! *fist bump*.

Those were the days. Too much stuff to learn now; I feel permanently out of date.

Duncan S · Mar 31, 2015

Me too

I write web applications in Java and use a component library which not only makes creating pages nice and simple, but every component generates HTML that is both compliant and accessible.
In this context accessible means all forms of difficulty including poor bandwidth, poor spec client computer and still works when Javascript is disabled as well as the more obvious problems with colour contrast and screen readers.
My previous product was one of only two web applications that gained the RNIB 'See It Right' certification. I'm pretty sure the current application would also get it if I submitted for approval.

Apologies for this digression - some very interesting answers being posted which I'm enjoying reading.

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