Coops Photography Site - Critique please!

[coops]

Just completely revamped my photography site and looking for ways to improve it.

Below is the link to the site:

Coops Photography

Any comments welcome, feel free to leave them directly on the site too.

And here is the Facebook Fan Page if you wanted to become a fan.

Many thanks, Coops!

 

[farscapeone]

Nice template and some excellent photos. I don't review templates I only discuss if they fit the ideas of a website and in this case it's just fine. On the other hand content is good (I love cars ).

Nice HDR http://www.coops.exofire.net/2010/04/16/hdr-images-at-centre-parcs-2008/

I'm an amateur photographer myself and I like to see nice photos.

 

[carl6969]

I enjoyed browsing around your site. I like the layout and found the site very easy to navigate. Good examples of your product, photography in this case. Link to contact page is very prominent which is very important in my opinion. Frequently contact information is difficult to find on some websites or does not exist at all. You have relevant information about your background on the About page, but you may wish to consider adding more details about your photography experience there. I think you have a promising future in both computer science and photography.

 

[cybrax]

Now how come with all that Jquery being used you did not use 'Lazyload' it's intended for photo heavy long pages and will speed up the menu appearing. It may even save some bandwidth on the server because I for one could not be bothered to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page.

Very few sites go beyond three page down scrolls for good reason.

 

[farscapeone]

Now how come with all that Jquery being used you did not use 'Lazyload' it's intended for photo heavy long pages and will speed up the menu appearing. It may even save some bandwidth on the server because I for one could not be bothered to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page.

Very few sites go beyond three page down scrolls for good reason.

Good point.

 

[coops]

Good little plug in that is, its installed and working well now. Thanks!

Any other comments ?

 

[cybrax]

How about a gallery script..?
Dumping the visitor onto a page with nothing but the image lacks presentation and as a photographer I'm sure that you want to show off your work in the best posibble way.

This jquery one should work well with your layout http://spaceforaname.com/gallery-light.html but there a good dozen more or so out there. Dynamicdrive.com has a couple of good javascript/php ones worth looking at as well.

Something else that might be worth tinkering with for a few selected choice High Res images is a Javascript Zoom viewer, 5 can be found from here
http://www.hotscripts.com/blog/javascript-zoom-scripts/

Have tried the TJP version and rather liked it but you may well prefer one of the others.

 

[coops]

What do you mean "nothing but the image"? Do you mean all the blog posts with images in them?

I am trying to find something for the gallery page that will create thumbnails for all my next gen galleries and link to the blog post they are contained in, but to no avail so far.

 

[michman]

It looks good I love your layout --> a winner.
Good job.
It seems it's not all done yet so I might give more comments on the content when it's done.

EDIT: What method did you mainly use to create it? Any specific peace of software?

 

[s603zone]

Awesome n Fabulous Shots man!! Brilliant!!

 

[coops]

It looks good I love your layout --> a winner.
Good job.
It seems it's not all done yet so I might give more comments on the content when it's done.

EDIT: What method did you mainly use to create it? Any specific peace of software?

Thanks mate Its mostly done, just needs the Services page filled out. Gallery page is now live

It uses wordpress, a fantastic free piece of blogging software

 

[cybrax]

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex4/php-photoalbum.htm

Auto thumbnail creation gallery and viewer

 

[myx10]

Cool! I'm really impressed. Ah, it's still empty in the right. Fill it!

 

[coops]

Thanks, I have received a lot of feedback saying it was too cluttered with lots of stuff in the side bar. I personally think it puts more focus on the photos now its emptier

 

[alok_bhave]

Nice layout of the top menu and the blogs.
Just one thing the home page is too long and contain photos (btw which are wonderful), so it is very heavy on the bandwidth and i guess know one will have the patience to scroll so many pages.

Instead one suggestion could be to use the side bar to having links to all previous blogs.

Keep clicking !!!

 

[coops]

Nice layout of the top menu and the blogs.
Just one thing the home page is too long and contain photos (btw which are wonderful), so it is very heavy on the bandwidth and i guess know one will have the patience to scroll so many pages.

Instead one suggestion could be to use the side bar to having links to all previous blogs.

Keep clicking !!!

Thank you

Im thinking of changing the homepage to the gallery page and having the blog as a separate link on the nav bar, this way it will look more professional and I can post kit updates etc to the blog.

What do you think ?

 

[priyaa161]

I like your site, your site header, white background and photos.

 

[coops]

I like your site, your site header, white background and photos.

Many thanks

 

[mjserv]

Really Nice! Great HDR

 

[stardom]

Really liked the site, the shots are very nice as well.

One thing that i noticed is i have an autopage loader for Firefox. It wouldn't autoload the next page

Hope it helps some.