Revamped website - please take a peek if you get a chance

I just redid my website and would like to invite any opinions, suggestions, as well as reports of dead links, spelling errors, etc.

It can be found HERE.

Thanks in advance.

Nice design, easy to navigate, and I wish you had more photos up on it (that is a good thing to leave the viewer want more). I don't think I had been to your old site, so I can't compare it.

I also like your attitude on the equipment page.

Hi Bill
I'm also in the process of updating my website. A couple of comments though. Your home page seems to have an error. Your name and address walk over each other. Also, your contact button doesn't work.
I'm particularly impressed with your image layout. I like the large, white matte look. The art gallery (I"M NOT AN ARTIST I"M A PHOTOGRAPHER) I belong too has suggested to me for quite a while to simplify my presentation and white mat's are the way to go, along with simple white or black frames. Supposedly the perspective buyers can visualize these images on their walls if the framing and matting isn't to complicated. Good work. By the way my current site is www.bob-swanson.com and my (under construction) site is www. bob-swanson.net. I actually prefer what smugmug is giving me under bsvirginian but gave my site designer a deposit back in October. bs

Bill, you have some impressive work and the presentation is very professional-looking. I think this is what a photo site should be like - let the images do the talking. Navigation is very easy and intuitive.
One thing you may have already considered is that some of the pages may not fit well in 1024x768 displays. Not sure if that's a concern for you though.

Guy

Bill, I like what you've done with the new site. You certainly have some great photography to share with the world. Guy mentioned one suggestion, a viewer's typical display resolution & screen size. Keeping the displayed image to a size that eliminates having to scroll improves the viewing experience. And I noticed a "disclaimer" on your avian page. I'm not sure you need to apologize for any of the images shown in that gallery, just my opinion.

Good luck with the new site!

Thanks Guys,

Bob - what browser are you using? On my computer the Home page looks, and the Contact info works as well. Hmmmm, strange.

Guy - I'm not very proficient when it comes to the technical stuff. I thought the all pages (with the exception of panos) would be able to be viewed without scrolling. Are you talking about vertical scrooling or horizontal scrolling?

Bill, in some of the pages (including the home page) I had to scroll vertically on my office screen (set to 1280x1024) to get both the image and the site title. Again, I'm not sure how much of an issue this is since personally I like to view large detailed images, but I would suggest you set your screen to 1024x768 and see what it looks like to decide.

Guy

Bill, the image file sizes do allow for extremely fast loading, but it does come at a price. Compression artifacts and lost detail are abundantly obvious in a majority of the images. Since I've seen so many of your photos on NPN with a much higher quality, it's a little disappointing to veiw them on the new website. I know it's a compromise, but considering the point of your photography and website is to display the beauty of the world, I think you're short changing your impressive work with the size and compression settings. If it's good, people can wait .

Kent - that's odd that the images are showing up that way, because the pixel size limits are the same as NPN, and the KB size is usually the same or larger than NPN. In my workflow, I first save for my website first, then add my copyright notice and save for NPN; everything else should be identical. Anybody have any ideas why these artifacts would be occurring? Could my hosting site have anything to do with it perhaps?

Bill,

Very nice design and great images inside, I've always admired your work. On the contacts page I was getting the overlapping of text at the bottom of the page, I use the Safari browser. One very minor comment, on the Home page where you jusified the text beside the photo, there are a numer of lines of text that have huge gaps between the words. I have done a lot of book, magazine, and newsletter layout and that has always been one of my pet peeves. It might help to change the size of the spacing of the letters to correct this if you consider this an issue.

Thanks Scott. For some reason people who use Safari seem to be having some issues with overlapping text. I will check into this to see what I can do about that. Thanks for reporting it to me.

I will also change font size on the Hom Page to see if that helps the look of the text.

Thanks for your insights.

When I checked the image properties on your website (don't know if I was getting the real properties because right clicking gave a warning) the file sizes were listed at .06 Kb. I don't know if it's even possible for them to be that small, but if they are, that would explain things. Also, the compression is far less noticeable on my laptop screen (higher resolution/smaller viewing size).

Thanks Scott. For some reason people who use Safari seem to be having some issues with overlapping text. I will check into this to see what I can do about that. Thanks for reporting it to me.

I will also change font size on the Hom Page to see if that helps the look of the text.

Thanks for your insights.

like your images Bill. No images loaded in your new gallery though. Was I supposed to see anything there?

Hi Richard - I just uploaded them 5 minutes ago (5:03 pm CDT), so they should be there now.

John - that's a good idea about deleting my home address (I'd hate to have you show up for dinner one night! )

I am using Microsoft explorer, setting is 1024x768, and I am also seeing a overlapping of text on images. On the Animals photo page the last line is in the images of the heron, bittern and spoonbill.