Introduction and new website help.

[mjr]

Hello all!

I've just joined after having lurked for a while, I have read a lot on the Medium Format section as I'm working towards taking the plunge!

I am hoping I can get some constructive comments on my new site, it's almost finished and is functioning correctly with just a few sections being added this weekend. I have tried to get it to be as simple as possible to navigate and buy from, on my high res mac screen it looks great to me but obviously lower res screens will see different things. I have tried it on Safari and Firefox on Mac, hopefully it will work as well on PC platforms.

I'd greatly appreciate any hints or tips, comments and considerations.

Thanks very much in advance!

Mat Richardson.

www.matrichardson.com

 

[ecliffordsmith]

Hi Mat,

Welcome to the forum. This is a really great place to commuicate with fellow photographers across topics and equipment choices.

You have some dramatic landscape photography on your website.

 

[mjr]

Hi Ed, thanks for the welcome!
I was aiming for dramatic so I hope you liked them!
Cheers.
Mat

 

[Terry]

Hi Mat,
Welcome to the forum. I look forward to havng a look at your site. For the moment I'm only on an iPhone but will certainly have a look when back in NY.

 

[mjr]

Thanks for the welcome TEB, hope you like it when you see it, feel free to say if you don't!
How are you finding your iphone? I have the new 3g one and think it's pretty cool, I look a bit odd with it though as I am a little too rough around the edges and have never been cool in my life!
Have a good weekend.
Mat

 

[BradleyGibson]

Welcome, Mat,

An excellent start with the website! I like how it is very clean, direct and to the point. I can find what I like and understand how to get there and how to get back.

You've chosen a presentation style that is interesting--it really emphasizes the landscape orientation over your portrait orientation, but stylistically that is a limitation I'm sure you're already aware of and decided to go with.

Three comments:
* Performance is somewhat slow when clicking on an item.
* Landscape items didn't come up properly on my browser, a wide landscape had the close button off the right side of my screen. Perhaps scaling the pop-up image to fit in the user's browser?
* Personally it would be nice to see more 'breathing room' between the pictures--it was hard to spend time with one of your images with so many others on-screen at once.

Oh and perhaps most importantly of all--nice work!

Take care,
Brad

 

[mjr]

Hi Brad.
Thanks for the welcome and excellent feedback!
I agree about the breathing room between the images, I think adding a bit of space would probably help to individualize the images a bit, I'll see if it can be done easily. Also good info about the pop up being too big for the screen, I haven't experienced that myself, will talk to the guy building it, I know he went to great lengths to make the site itself fit to different screens, maybe he missed off adding the same info to the pop up!
I'm not sure what I can do about the performance, the images are pretty small, maybe there is a way to streamline it so that the images in view open quicker and the ones out of view are sacrificed a little, I'm not a web expert!
Anyway, thanks for the comments, really appreciate it and it all helps!
Cheers.
Mat.

 

[sizifo]

Hi Brad.
Thanks for the welcome and excellent feedback!
I agree about the breathing room between the images, I think adding a bit of space would probably help to individualize the images a bit, I'll see if it can be done easily. Also good info about the pop up being too big for the screen, I haven't experienced that myself, will talk to the guy building it, I know he went to great lengths to make the site itself fit to different screens, maybe he missed off adding the same info to the pop up!
I'm not sure what I can do about the performance, the images are pretty small, maybe there is a way to streamline it so that the images in view open quicker and the ones out of view are sacrificed a little, I'm not a web expert!
Anyway, thanks for the comments, really appreciate it and it all helps!
Cheers.
Mat.

The site looks good - don't have much to say on that. All I wanted to say is that the photos are amazing.

 

[helenhill]

Mother Nature is very Proud......You've Captured HER in All her Glory & Magnificently

Best- helen

 

[mjr]

Sizifo and Helen, thanks very much for commenting, glad you liked them!

Mat

 

[mjr]

Morning!

There have been a few tweaks and additions to my site now, the obvious one is the gap between the images, hopefully that will help to break it up a bit and allow you to concentrate on one image a little better. I have added a link to new images as a way of letting people have the option of jumping to new stuff rather than scrolling through each section.
Any further comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers!
Mat

www.matrichardson.com

 

[tollie]

Wonderful images... the landscapes are just sublime.

I'll bet that there is a back story to making them. I would welcome knowing a bit more about that.

Todd

 

[mjr]

Hi Todd
Thanks very much for looking at the site, are you saying that you think it'd be a good idea to go into the whole Antarctic experience? I have toyed with the idea of writing about my experiences there and have a couple of short videos that show the horrific conditions over the long winter months. If it's something people would like to read about then I will put something together.
The site should now load quicker, the pop up box now shrinks to fit whatever screen it's being displayed on so hopefully the user experience is improved.
Does anyone have thoughts on a good number of images to be displayed on a site at one time? I'm thinking that 30 images in any one gallery is enough, I am planning on rotating complete sets every month or so giving entirely new images to see. Anyone else got views on this?
Thanks again Todd!
Mat