New to the business

[JHPHOTOART]

I am fairly new to the business and am trying to get comments and exposure for my web site. Please check out my gallery page and let me know what you think.

www.jhphotoart.com (http://www.jhphotoart.com/)

Thanks,
JHPHOTOART

[Radtech1]

Some decent shots.

That "POWERED BY TRW WEB DESIGN" logo is REALLY IRRITATING. They better be paying you. A lot.

Rad

[knt3424]

1. Get rid of the TRW rotating graphic.

2. Put a small text line/link at the bottom of your page. The little flashy menu rollover graphics don't fit the professional look of the page... lose that in favor of a tasteful highlight... color change or brightness change or solid background.

3. All of your sub-menu items are trying to generate pop-ups, and my pop-up blocker is killing them. People won't like that. Change them to page links and generate a new page.

Other than that I like the gray color scheme for a photography site, it's a very nice look and layout, and from what I can see, the photos are nice. I didn't bypass the popup blocker so I haven't seen the galleries and stuff yet tho... good job! Just the 'flashy' stuff makes it look like 'myspace' and no one wants that! hehehe

[Guineh]

The spinning logo thing is horrid. Dump it.

Didn't get to see any of the pictures in the galleries, because they're in pop-ups. Not a great first impression for a potential client.

I do like the idea of the main page running a slideshow of select images.

Mouseover animation looks like it might have a glitch, but may be intentional.

Bio and Services pages the transparency may need tweaking, or complete elimination, it makes the text a bit difficult to read. There appears to be some inconsistency between the pages, some have white text, some have black text, also an italic font lowers readability, especially with large areas of text.

[Thrill]

The graphic is definitely a terrible distraction.

I don't mind the rollover menu graphics, but I didn't like how the website took up only a tiny portion of my LCD, it seemed weird to me.

[Titus213]

My first load of your site was just over 12 seconds. Slide show images look good. TRW twisting is not nice and generates a pop-up when clicked (to be honest I looked at your slide show and had to hunt for the twisty thing). I block ALL pop-ups and I'm sure most other folks do also so it's not really accomplishing much. Unless you count irritation. It seems to have accomplished a lot of that.


Ackkkkkkkk - all your subsequent pages are pop-ups too. That would NEVER fly with me. Sorry.

[mudkips]

If I want a new tab I'll middle click, you really need to ditch the popups as said. I really don't see the need for an entirely flash site here, it would be much more portable and dialup friendly if you stuck to limiting your flash usage to the slideshows.

As it stands those without flash cannot use your site at all.

Your gallery uses frames for no good reason, layout is broken under firefox(can't read all the text with large images). Once in the gallery there is no navigation to other galleries or back to your site, you have to close the annoyingly popped up window and go back.

Basically it feels like a bunch of script dumped together, not a well thought out and designed site.

[JHPHOTOART]

I really appreciate all of the feed back that i have received. We have taken a lot of the suggestions that were posted here on this forum and implemented them on the website. Please go back and take another look i think you will like what you see.

www.jhphotoart.com (http://www.jhphotoart.com/)

Thanks,
JHPHOTOART

[Radtech1]

Not loading at all.

Is that you, harris?

[Radtech1]

Not loading at all.

OK, I went and took the dog out for a walk. About a mile and a half of walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff / walk / sniff.

Now that I am back, your page STILL isn't loaded.

I think you may need to tweak something.

Rad

[GeoffSobering]

Just (10:20pm CST) tried it on Firefox (w/ Flash) and IE 7 (w/o Flash)

With Flash it loaded intermitably slowly on DSL (still treated to the rotating logo splash page while waiting for the Flash app to load). Without Flash is came up faster (at least), but only showed a gray rectangle. :rolleyes:

Once it's loaded, it looks nice, but to be honest I'd really have to want it to wait that long...

I'd suggest a pure-HTML main page with links to gallery(s) - maybe with a Javascript slideshow, but not much more.
Get the intro. up quickly!
Remember this is the "TV Generation" with the attention span measured in milliseconds...

Cheers,

Geoff S.

[StewartR]

I couldn't be bothered to wait for the front page to load. It's so-o-o-o-o slow! The only thing that loaded quickly was that rotating logo, which has to be just about the worst I have ever seen.

[Bollan]

The first impression isn't very good. The loading time is far to long and i'm on a 10/mbit line. That rotating logo gives a really cheap and unprofessional look. If i was a potential client i would just hit the backwards button on my mouse straight away.

Once in i would try to reduce the amount of images you have up there. There are far too many images not up to the standard in my opinion, considering it's a "professional" site.

Put together a portfolio of really good shots and maybe a few galleries of specific assignments you have done.

The interface is not very user friendly and on some pages the menu wont work at all. Try to make sure that the site work fast, specially at the entrance, and with both IE and FF.

Your "about me" page isn't very selling to be honest. I don't really think its an advantage telling your clients that your aunt gave you XXX camera. Try to do a more professional resumé, maybe naming a few places where you have published your work etc.

Try to write in third person about yourself as it usually sounds more professional instead of doing it in first person.

[Titus213]

Wow, you've been busy. What a change - just a hair over 8 seconds to load, pop-up pages gone. And some really nice photography. Love your photos.

[chrisbaker42]

Sorry to say you really must ditch the rotating logo as it does not look at all professional - unlike the rest of the site.