First web foray

Hello, I just put up my first attemp at a website and invite everyone to
check it out and let me know what you think of the photos. I know the
website itself is rudimentary but I'm not a programming guru, I'm just
soliciting constructive criticism on the pics. Thanks!

Kelly

http://members.cox.net/boomboom4/index.htm


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Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

Kelly B wrote:

Hello, I just put up my first attemp at a website and invite everyone
to check it out and let me know what you think of the photos. I know
the website itself is rudimentary but I'm not a programming guru, I'm
just soliciting constructive criticism on the pics. Thanks!

Kelly

http://members.cox.net/boomboom4/index.htm



First attempt timed out. Second attempt connection was refused.

Third time's the charm.

Some of your photos are very good, and some just so-so.

The eagle, the tiger and snow leopard are very good. Nice depth of field
and isolation from the background.

Cheetah 2 is good although he's a little underexposed against that light
background.

Cheetah 1 has the fence post sticking out of the cheetah's back, a
classic snapshot flaw.

Also, your backdrops needs work. The backdrop for your deer photos fills
the entire frame as it should. On your other pages, the backdrop repeats
to the right and at the bottom. But the repetition is partial and looks
like badly mismatched wallpaper.

I couldn't really look closely at your deer photos because of repeated
time out & connection refused.

I'd also suggest another format rather than GIF for your photos,
probably JPEG. And when someone views the images, they should get a full
frame view.

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 10:41:30 -0500, no_name
wrote:

First attempt timed out. Second attempt connection was refused.

Third time's the charm.

Sorry if your having trouble connecting, I'm not sure where the issue
lies
there. It's my 10Meg free website space from my ISP.


Some of your photos are very good, and some just so-so.

The eagle, the tiger and snow leopard are very good. Nice depth of field
and isolation from the background.

Cheetah 2 is good although he's a little underexposed against that light
background.

Cheetah 1 has the fence post sticking out of the cheetah's back, a
classic snapshot flaw.

Thanks! I appreciate the feedback! Not sure what I could do about the
fence
post, the Cheetahs were constantly moving so there was little point in
repositioning the tripod. I just wanted to catch the Cheetah mid-yawn as it
was a bit more distinctive than Cheetahs walking around...



Also, your backdrops needs work. The backdrop for your deer photos fills
the entire frame as it should. On your other pages, the backdrop repeats
to the right and at the bottom. But the repetition is partial and looks
like badly mismatched wallpaper.

Anyone know what settings to use for website backdrop photos? I know
72ppi
but what picture dimensions? I've been playing around trying to fix this
issue as it does look quite bad, but I have to keep the file sizes small
due to the 10Mbyte limit.


I couldn't really look closely at your deer photos because of repeated
time out & connection refused.

I'd also suggest another format rather than GIF for your photos,
probably JPEG. And when someone views the images, they should get a full
frame view.

When I tell photoshop to "save for web" it defaults to GIF so I assumed
that would be OK. Would JPEG be the same file size? Any suggestions as to
what size is full frame?





--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

Kelly B wrote:

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 10:41:30 -0500, no_name
wrote:

First attempt timed out. Second attempt connection was refused.

Third time's the charm.


Sorry if your having trouble connecting, I'm not sure where the issue
lies
there. It's my 10Meg free website space from my ISP.


Some of your photos are very good, and some just so-so.

The eagle, the tiger and snow leopard are very good. Nice depth of
field and isolation from the background.

Cheetah 2 is good although he's a little underexposed against that
light background.

Cheetah 1 has the fence post sticking out of the cheetah's back, a
classic snapshot flaw.


Thanks! I appreciate the feedback! Not sure what I could do about the
fence
post, the Cheetahs were constantly moving so there was little point in
repositioning the tripod. I just wanted to catch the Cheetah mid-yawn as it
was a bit more distinctive than Cheetahs walking around...


Do what you did to get Cheetah 2. Spend a whole day at the zoo and
concentrate on the Cheetahs. Eventually, you'll catch the Cheetah
sitting out away from the fence while it's yawning.

You've already got the first part of a great image, the IDEA.

Now all you have to do is "catch the rabbit".



Also, your backdrops needs work. The backdrop for your deer photos
fills the entire frame as it should. On your other pages, the
backdrop repeats to the right and at the bottom. But the repetition
is partial and looks like badly mismatched wallpaper.


Anyone know what settings to use for website backdrop photos? I know
72ppi
but what picture dimensions? I've been playing around trying to fix this
issue as it does look quite bad, but I have to keep the file sizes small
due to the 10Mbyte limit.


I couldn't really look closely at your deer photos because of
repeated time out & connection refused.

I'd also suggest another format rather than GIF for your photos,
probably JPEG. And when someone views the images, they should get a
full frame view.


When I tell photoshop to "save for web" it defaults to GIF so I
assumed that would be OK. Would JPEG be the same file size? Any
suggestions as to what size is full frame?

I'm no web guru (or Photoshop pro), but I'm pretty sure you can set the
"save for web" default in Photoshop for either JPEG or GIF; possibly for
other file formats as well. JPEGs work well for the web because you can
get large images with small files.

And I'm sure there's some way in HTML to allow an image to either
auto-size to fill the frame or size the window to the image. Same should
be true for auto-sizing the backdrop image so it always fills the frame.

I say this because I see it done on other sites. I haven't worked on my
own website yet, so I can't give you specific how-tos.

But, you've got a start.

The journey of a thousand miles ... and all that.

For the backdrop, chose a background color that matches the photo so
it's not that shocking when it changes from white. Like this:
http://www.edgehill.net/1

Definitely use jpegs! I don't think I would try to resize images, just
present them at original pixels. Maybe reduce only if there is a way,
they'll just look gritty enlarged.

I agree some great shots & some mediocre. Put the great ones on top &
let people drill down further to get to the less than perfect shots.
Nice start!


no_name wrote:

Kelly B wrote:

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 10:41:30 -0500, no_name
wrote:

First attempt timed out. Second attempt connection was refused.

Third time's the charm.



Sorry if your having trouble connecting, I'm not sure where the
issue lies
there. It's my 10Meg free website space from my ISP.


Some of your photos are very good, and some just so-so.

The eagle, the tiger and snow leopard are very good. Nice depth of
field and isolation from the background.

Cheetah 2 is good although he's a little underexposed against that
light background.

Cheetah 1 has the fence post sticking out of the cheetah's back, a
classic snapshot flaw.



Thanks! I appreciate the feedback! Not sure what I could do about
the fence
post, the Cheetahs were constantly moving so there was little point in
repositioning the tripod. I just wanted to catch the Cheetah mid-yawn
as it
was a bit more distinctive than Cheetahs walking around...


Do what you did to get Cheetah 2. Spend a whole day at the zoo and
concentrate on the Cheetahs. Eventually, you'll catch the Cheetah
sitting out away from the fence while it's yawning.

You've already got the first part of a great image, the IDEA.

Now all you have to do is "catch the rabbit".



Also, your backdrops needs work. The backdrop for your deer photos
fills the entire frame as it should. On your other pages, the
backdrop repeats to the right and at the bottom. But the repetition
is partial and looks like badly mismatched wallpaper.



Anyone know what settings to use for website backdrop photos? I
know 72ppi
but what picture dimensions? I've been playing around trying to fix this
issue as it does look quite bad, but I have to keep the file sizes small
due to the 10Mbyte limit.


I couldn't really look closely at your deer photos because of
repeated time out & connection refused.

I'd also suggest another format rather than GIF for your photos,
probably JPEG. And when someone views the images, they should get a
full frame view.



When I tell photoshop to "save for web" it defaults to GIF so I
assumed that would be OK. Would JPEG be the same file size? Any
suggestions as to what size is full frame?


I'm no web guru (or Photoshop pro), but I'm pretty sure you can set the
"save for web" default in Photoshop for either JPEG or GIF; possibly for
other file formats as well. JPEGs work well for the web because you can
get large images with small files.

And I'm sure there's some way in HTML to allow an image to either
auto-size to fill the frame or size the window to the image. Same should
be true for auto-sizing the backdrop image so it always fills the frame.

I say this because I see it done on other sites. I haven't worked on my
own website yet, so I can't give you specific how-tos.

But, you've got a start.

The journey of a thousand miles ... and all that.





--
Paul Furman
http://www.edgehill.net/1
Bay Natives
http://www.baynatives.com

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 18:37:26 -0500, Paul Furman
wrote:

For the backdrop, chose a background color that matches the photo so
it's not that shocking when it changes from white. Like this:
http://www.edgehill.net/1

Definitely use jpegs! I don't think I would try to resize images, just
present them at original pixels. Maybe reduce only if there is a way,
they'll just look gritty enlarged.

I agree some great shots & some mediocre. Put the great ones on top &
let people drill down further to get to the less than perfect shots.
Nice start!



I will definately incorporate some of the changes suggested (and already
have done some of them!). I can't put the pics on at full size however, my
ISP provides 10 Mbytes for a personal website, at full resolution I could
fit about five pictures before I busted 10Mbytes. Any feedback on which
ones are the best and which the worst? Thanks for the feedback in any case!

Kelly

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

Kelly B wrote:

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 18:37:26 -0500, Paul Furman
wrote:

For the backdrop, chose a background color that matches the photo so
it's not that shocking when it changes from white. Like this:
http://www.edgehill.net/1

Definitely use jpegs! I don't think I would try to resize images,
just present them at original pixels. Maybe reduce only if there is a
way, they'll just look gritty enlarged.

I agree some great shots & some mediocre. Put the great ones on top &
let people drill down further to get to the less than perfect shots.
Nice start!



I will definately incorporate some of the changes suggested (and
already have done some of them!). I can't put the pics on at full size
however, my ISP provides 10 Mbytes for a personal website, at full
resolution I could fit about five pictures before I busted 10Mbytes.
Any feedback on which ones are the best and which the worst? Thanks for
the feedback in any case!

The eagle background can be reduced to 30K from 430K just compressing to
about 40% with save for web. You might chose something less extreme,
just keep an eye on the rectangular artifacts in the background. The
bald eagle feature pic can go to 10K as a jpeg versus 84K as a gif and
you'd retain more original colors starting with the original but
probably not get it that small that way.

I like the first bald eagle, the red tail is disappointing because of
the ugly roof/roost but the flying one is nice. Can you crop the baby
cardinal & woodpecker to have them less centered? The wild turkey is
cool. So that's about half that could fit on the first page & move the
rest to a second page.

For animals I like the bengal, cheetah & jaguar, maybe the polar bear.

For flowers, the cosmos, lotus, spider and red rose.

Doe eating, buck with velvet & buck on hillside-1

Misc: Galena bldg & cool tree.



--
Paul Furman
http://www.edgehill.net/1
Bay Natives
http://www.baynatives.com

BTW I really do like the ones I said I like. If only those were
available, I'd be very impressed!

Paul Furman wrote:

Kelly B wrote:

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 18:37:26 -0500, Paul Furman
wrote:

For the backdrop, chose a background color that matches the photo so
it's not that shocking when it changes from white. Like this:
http://www.edgehill.net/1

Definitely use jpegs! I don't think I would try to resize images,
just present them at original pixels. Maybe reduce only if there is
a way, they'll just look gritty enlarged.

I agree some great shots & some mediocre. Put the great ones on top
& let people drill down further to get to the less than perfect
shots. Nice start!



I will definately incorporate some of the changes suggested (and
already have done some of them!). I can't put the pics on at full
size however, my ISP provides 10 Mbytes for a personal website, at
full resolution I could fit about five pictures before I busted
10Mbytes. Any feedback on which ones are the best and which the
worst? Thanks for the feedback in any case!


The eagle background can be reduced to 30K from 430K just compressing to
about 40% with save for web. You might chose something less extreme,
just keep an eye on the rectangular artifacts in the background. The
bald eagle feature pic can go to 10K as a jpeg versus 84K as a gif and
you'd retain more original colors starting with the original but
probably not get it that small that way.

I like the first bald eagle, the red tail is disappointing because of
the ugly roof/roost but the flying one is nice. Can you crop the baby
cardinal & woodpecker to have them less centered? The wild turkey is
cool. So that's about half that could fit on the first page & move the
rest to a second page.

For animals I like the bengal, cheetah & jaguar, maybe the polar bear.

For flowers, the cosmos, lotus, spider and red rose.

Doe eating, buck with velvet & buck on hillside-1

Misc: Galena bldg & cool tree.




--
Paul Furman
http://www.edgehill.net/1
Bay Natives
http://www.baynatives.com

Kelly B wrote:

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 18:37:26 -0500, Paul Furman
wrote:

For the backdrop, chose a background color that matches the photo so
it's not that shocking when it changes from white. Like this:
http://www.edgehill.net/1

Definitely use jpegs! I don't think I would try to resize images,
just present them at original pixels. Maybe reduce only if there is a
way, they'll just look gritty enlarged.

I agree some great shots & some mediocre. Put the great ones on top &
let people drill down further to get to the less than perfect shots.
Nice start!



I will definately incorporate some of the changes suggested (and
already have done some of them!). I can't put the pics on at full size
however, my ISP provides 10 Mbytes for a personal website, at full
resolution I could fit about five pictures before I busted 10Mbytes.
Any feedback on which ones are the best and which the worst? Thanks for
the feedback in any case!

Kelly


Which is one reason JPEG was suggested.

You could probably get your full size images into a small enough file by
making a JPEG copy, while still retaining sufficient quality for web
viewing. (Keep the original files just as they came out of the camera on
your computer at home.)

I've been able to reduce 17MB raw files to under 2 MB with no apparent
loss of quality (when viewed on a monitor) and could have taken the
filesize down a lot more while retaining enough quality for a web page.