need an honest opinion

[sayward07 Profile Private message]

I am wanting to start up a photography business (actually have always wanted to, things just fell into place for me now so it's working out)
I have building up my photography skills for years, and more recently practicing on family and friends. I want to get my name out there, and offer 50% off my prices to start, just to try and build up my portfolio and gain experience with people I don't know....
Problem is I can't trust anyone I know to give me an honest opinion on my photos... just as well I don't know anyone that knows enough about photography to tell me what they think. So I figured this would be the place to come...
I am asking for constructive criticism... I do want honesty, but nothing so harsh I'll cry ...
So here goes!
My website is www.pippinspics.com
Looking forward to the comments!

[sayward07 Profile Private message]

Oh yeah, and I still have some tweaks to work out on my website, so I am mainly looking for comments on the photography... maybe ease of site navigation as well.
Thanks!

[Ron Profile Private messageWebsite]

Hi Sayward07
No Tears I Promise ... I always like to give my opinion, when asked about photography /photographers. And we all no about opinions!! I wish you the best of luck with your photography business. I love to hear when people go after their passions.
I don't think it would be fair to make comments about you or your photographic skills based on 5 photographs. Please upload quite a few more so that it really gives us a look at who you are and the direction of your photography.
Ron
PS: If there were more pics that I missed then oooops!! ... lol

[sayward07 Profile Private message]

Thanks Ron-
The website I am using only allows those five, but if you go in the "services" page and click on either Maternity, family, children, or back in the dress, it will open a new window with a slide show portfolio for each... so that may be a problem in itself, directing people there. Good to know!
Thanks

[Ron Profile Private messageWebsite]

Hi
OK well it goes to show people don't read, or at least I don't - I'm a New Yorker - I move quick ... lol ... When I clicked on the header "Portfolio" I expected to see your photos, instead of reading - go to your services page and then look for the link to the images. I am no expert by no means but wouldn't it be better if you jusy attach the link to each photo on the portfolio page.
Regarding your photography will have to wait for another night as I'll be offline the rest of the evening.
Ron
PS: Had a felling I was wrong and I missed your other photos ...lol

[stickgirl Profile Private message]

Like Ron, I do have an opinion, so I hope you don't mind me expressing it.

I checked out your website. Although you didn't ask for any comments on it, I'm offering one anyway. The website itself looks ok, however I would loose the music. If I want music, I'll play some. You also have a couple of typos. Do you realize that in order for someone to watch one of your shows, they will need to install Presenter? I don't recall this being mentioned on your page.

I wasn't overly impressed with the pictures and part of that may be the way they were saved. The bottom picture with the grandparents and grandchildren, if you look at them, he looks like he is looking elsewhere and the eyes and teeth look like they are shiny, white specks that were added. I didn't care for the foot picture. You should use a picture that is going to help you sell your services, like a baby picture, or a picture of a pet, etc., landscape or whatever your specialty is.

You should probably join a photography forum such as http://www.nikonians.org/forums/ where you can post pictures and ask for critiques. There are plenty of photography forums around.

Kathy

[MG - Admin]

Technically the photos seems fine.

I know you weren't looking for web site comments, but I do have a couple of comments that you might want to consider:

1) Resize your images that you have shown on the Home and the Portfolio pages to fit the area you want them displayed. As you have them now they take longer than they should to load, as well as causing them to not look as good as they should. Someone mentioned the photo with the grandparents having some issues. These are all caused by taking an image that is 1,827px × 2,748px and cramming them into a space of 237px × 321px. If you resize your images accordingly you'll find that your pages load faster and the images will look as nice as you intended them to.

2) You should think about embedding your slide shows into your own web pages so as not to direct people away from your site. It also doesn't look as professional when you direct someone to a third party site without explaining why. Embedding the shows is simple to do (Instructions here). Take a look at how I do it and you can see why it's important to make the show pages part of your site. It just makes everything more cohesive. Oh, and I would take out the Photodex intro.

Good luck!

Mike

[sayward07 Profile Private message]

Thank you so much for those suggestions. I will definilty tweak the size of my pictures. I have wanted to play the shows on my website, and I read your instructsions, unfortunatly I don't know anything about website coding... I am using a kind of pre-built site template. If there is an easy way to explain it for somthing like this I am all ears!

[Robert Barnett]

A couple of things...

1. The images you have up are big apparently. I am using a Pro level DSL connection (wired, not wireless) and it is taking minutes for the images to load. You need to work on your image compression skills for your web site.

2. I don't know if it is your editing, style or my screen but the images appear under-exposed. For example the little girl bending over, there is no detail in the hair. I also don't find that pose overly interesting. It looks like she was posed instead of being more nature and spontaneous.

3. On the portfolio page the little girl looking through the picture frame is just precious. In fact I would suggest getting a selection of traditional and whimiscal frames and making this at least for child photography a signature shot, include one with each set of pictures. Something like animal shaped frames, geometric shapes, flower shapes, etc. Really cute and unique from what I have seen.

4. I think I know what is wrong with the image loading time. You have large pixel sized images that you have resized down in the web design program instead of in an image editor (something like 2000x3000 pixels when they should be 600x700 for the large version an 225 or 250 x the same for the thumbnail. Don't rely on your web design software to do this or the browser.

5. The rest of the images on the portfolio page look good. Nothing as special and unique as the little girl with the picture frame.

6. I see none that are done in studio with controlled lighting, backgrounds and/or green screen. This is something you should work on as it will probably be something that people will want. Myself I would invest in the lighting and a really good green screen setup. Creating digital backdrops for portraits is easy (once you know something like Photoshop, which I would recommend that you invest in) and unlimited and takes up a lot less storage space.

7. The bride on the barn is interesting, but I can't say I like it. If I was the bride I would be a little upset that she is so small in the frame. Now if this is just one image in a package of many and there are a lot of other more close up images it should be ok. But, keeps these to a minimum, it is about the bride. I would try moving the bride out away from the barn so you see the same amount of it, but the bride is larger in the frame.

Robert

[bigsewed Profile Private message]

Besides embedding show in your website...
Add some music to your shows...
To me music is a big plus...
Wes

[sayward07 Profile Private message]

Thank you all so much. I've made the images smaller in photoshop, and I am working on a fun show to showcase the rest of my portfolio.
The little girl in the frame is my daughter thanks for the ideas on that, I will definitly look for some more fun frames.

[sayward07 Profile Private message]

So based off of your comments, I have totally revamped my website, and am looking forward to more feedback!
Thanks again everyone

[Ron Profile Private messageWebsite]

Hey
So Pippen is now a Go Daddy Girl ... Look Out!!
I took a quick peek and noticed an improvement over the last version.
Putting a site together is a lot of work as you know, don't be content, keep looking to tweak & improve.

I didn't spend a lot of time but did notice a few areas of contention.
Investment in lieu of Pricing might be confusing to some.
I noticed a few spelling errors, and and, offers s/b offer, portfolio missing o at the end, purchases
missing a letter or 2
There seems to be a lot of black empty space in many areas.
You created an extra click to your photo site, since you want a photography service I wouldn't give your blog the same space as your site, you could use a link to your blog, you should open direct to the page you want your customers to see...that's going to make the first impression of you & your service, give it some thought and check out other photographers sites.
Good Progress, I will check back in a bit
Good Luck
Ron

[MG - Admin]

I just took a very quick look, but here are a few comments:

1) I liked the theme and layout of your first site better. The current design looks very plain and lacks the personality of the first one. I know it's a work in progress, but the first sample just seemed so much more polished. I'm a fan of black or dark themes since I use them for my sites, but I think the combination of the starkness of the design, the haphazard page layouts, and the comic sans font all just seemed a bit clumsy. Tightening things up and adding some elegance will help change all of that.

2) You should really consider designing your layout to fit a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 as this is still a pretty standard resolution for most people on the internet. 1200 x 800 is becoming more prevalent, but anything larger than that is still uncommon. Scrolling up or down when necessary is okay, but asking your viewers to scroll sideways is a big turnoff. If you're unsure of how to keep things a certain width my suggestion would be to create a table with no borders at a set width of 1000. Then place all of your content in the table. It will keep things tidy and remove any worries of having to scroll sideways.

3) On your home page there is a lot of dead space. Get rid of the hit counter and move the copyright info up to just beneath your images. I'd also remove the "Go Daddy" ad if possible, but I'm not sure if that's possible due to your hosting situation. If you can't remove the ad, move it over to the left with the Facebook link and place it below your menu. The goal here is to remove the need for any scrolling. It's a home page and doesn't have enough content to warrant needing the extra space. A tight & clean intro to your web site will make it look more polished and professional.

4) Your images are still being resized by the browser rather than being resized properly in Photoshop or any other image editor. Take note of what size you want your images displayed on the web page and resize them using your editor and apply appropriate sharpening. Your images will suffer if you continue to let the browser do the resizing. This applies to the thumbnails in your Portfolio section as well. Make a separate image for your thumbnails instead of using your larger images. You're promoting a photography site and your samples must show the quality of work that you promise to deliver. Letting the browser take care of resizing your images is the wrong message. I can't stress enough how important this is.

5) You should move the "About Me" option in your menu down the list just before "Contact".

I hope I'm not raining on your parade. I know how difficult it is to create a site from scratch when you're new to the process. I've been there. Hopefully my suggestions will help you move along the learning curve a bit faster. If you have any questions or want some help on getting things done let me know.

Good luck!

Mike

[stickgirl Profile Private message]

Although I didn't check it out in any great detail, here is my 2 cents.

I checked out your Details page. The counter and the Go Daddy logo appear on top of words instead of the bottom of the page. If you really feel the need to have a counter, I would make it invisible.

You have a sample show on your portfolio page. I would change the music to be royalty free unless you paid the many fees involved for granting you that luxury. As a professional photographer, I'm sure you wouldn't want someone using your photographs and not reimbursing you. Also, the show needs to be timed to the pace of the music and it isn't.

Good luck!

Kathy