Finally, a site that I really like. Well, to an extend.
Simple and elegant design. Contents well organized and easy to navigate. Nice contents, both text and images. Fast loading. Meets the photog's stated objective. Congratulations for taking the time to hand code it.
Great use and control of background and text: minimal and consistent color, size, and style through the site. The exception is the galleries' descriptions: the text font color, unlike elsewhere, is not black, making them less legible against their background.
The News page is terrific, but can be simplied or better organized. Now it reads like a blog, and that's fine. But to really assist visitors, provide them with a concise but accurate revision history (i.e. without how they are done, future plans, etc.). IOW, tell them what's new and link them there. That's the best way to keep their interest. Most web sites do not bother to provide revision histories, or to date their articles. This is a huge annoyance to returning visitors. How are they supposed to find out what has been updated and when? If they don't know, they won't have the patience to go through each page and would simply leave. This is especially important for web galleries that are updated frequently. The LL site has a What's New page, and that's great. But none of the articles are dated. At this fast changing stage of digital imaging, how can the readers tell which articles are stale and which are not?
The right angle pointers of the menu buttons are misleading (and unnecessary?). They imply there are drop down menus, but the only one that works this way is the Galleries button.
The menu column is wider than necessary. Slimming it down can free up more horizontal real estate for better use.
Gallery thumbnails:
- less on a page will allow larger sizes
- portraits are stretched into landscapes
- how will you handle a big gallery, say with 30 images?
Enlargements:
- portraits are significantly smaller than landscapes. I suppose this is done to prevent the need of vertical scrolling. But I would layout the gallery page differently to make optimal use of the premium vertical real estate. For example, the large title and caption, the large back/forward arrows, the description and the thumbnails are all taking up vertical space. They don't need to be.
To a new member like you, my comments may seem harsh for a site that I really like. But you'll feel better after reading what I had to say about other sites:
http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....showtopic=13890