I’m going to cut right to the chase here. Photography websites are more often poorly designed than most other small-business websites. They look great, but their navigation is absolutely terrible from a user interface standpoint. Designers focus too much on “ohh that’s pretty” and not nearly enough on “this works great”. Here’s a few examples:
- Thumbnails are a great way to allow someone to find a photo that they’re looking for. Numbers are not. Use thumbnails to link to photos, not numbers or Next/Last arrows only.
- Thumbnails should be a representation of the photo that will be pulled up. When you crop it in, someone has no idea what photo is the one they’re looking for. Use thumbnails that depict the focal point of the photo being represented, not just a really tight crop of a texture off in the corner that looks cool small.
- Navigation arrows that allow you to continue clicking the same arrow should allow you to do so without moving the mouse all around. That means don’t move them. Instead of placing them below the photo and having the photo change heights, put them above the photo where they’ll be in the same place under the mouse cursor for every next image.
- Your fancy loading screen wastes 10 seconds of your visitors time just to show them your name. That associates your name with a negative connotation. While the negative association doesn’t tend to happen in younger people, why risk it at all?
- Very few people are interested in having music load up when your website does, so don’t do it. If you want the impact that music has, leave it as a (prominent) option for your user, and spend the time to have it fade in and out instead of starting and stopping abruptly.
- Your 8 second photo transitions assume everybody will want to view each of your photos for at least 16 seconds. Don’t be so optimistic or demanding. Your website should get out of the way of your visitors and let them decide how to browse your site.
- That’s great that you like websites that don’t make you have to use your scroll wheel, but the majority of the Internet browsing population does not. That means text in Flash with a scroll bar is out. Just don’t do it.
- Websites that are 100% flash demonstrate ignorance on part of the designer/developer in the vast majority of cases. There are very, very few legitimate reasons to create a website in 100% flash and at least 50 reasons not to.
So yeah. Photographers, get on the ball. Websites that look cool don’t convert. Websites that function but look like ass can convert. Websites that strike a balance between the two (especially when done with concern for your target demographic), while significantly more time consuming, have the highest potential to convert traffic into customers. Think twice before hiring that flash designer next time. 
“Photographers” that treat it like it’s neither a craft, art, or skill but rather a way to get babes. They always seem to shoot bikini-glamour and I’m pretty sure they’re the sole reason that DIY calendar printing companies stay in business. They can’t take a photo worth a damn and their Photoshop skills are so subpar that they end up taking a poorly exposed photo and turning it into a blurry, orange mess. Seriously, is there a single guy out there that would fuck a blurry, orange chick?
Even worse, though, are “models” that are really just attention whores with too much flab around their bellies that run around and make like they are in demand. They never understand that there are more girls capable of modeling than there is a need for them; in other words, there’s a shortage of good photographers or a surplus of decent models. I’m sure if these dumbshits when to economics class they only learned which boys in class they could cheat off of and how long it would take them to finish a test so they could get back to texting. Worst part about them is that they are convinced that photographers are perverts out to get them and that they shouldn’t take their clothes off unless they’re getting paid – isn’t that the very definition of a stripper, though? You can’t expect these girls with low IQ’s to figure that one out on their own, though.
Shit, while we’re on the subject, the entirety of the ‘photography’ industry pisses me off. Fat guys with equipment lust and viagra prescriptions, materialistic bimbos with horrible values, and some terrible misconception that anybody cares.
Footnote: I haven’t been posting here much lately. Sometimes all the lag associated with WordPress just isn’t inspiring. That and the lack of really good themes, a solid following, and just general openness to share my opinion. I’d say that’d change, but it’d be a lie.
This post is really more of a note that hopefully I’ll embellish upon in the future.
A friend asked the other day how much I photoshop my photos. Not a special or uncommon question by any means, but it got me thinking, and I realized something – I always feel bad when I use Photoshop to fake something that could have been so easily achieved by just shooting film. I feel like a poseur and frankly, it’s embarrassing to admit that I play in Photoshop like a 12 year old girl. After all, that’s not what a pro would do, right?
And that’s what I realized. With film, we had choices on how the photo would come out that didn’t just involve accurate exposure. We could deliberately decide to use Velvia 50 to get vivid, saturated colors, or shoot tungsten film outdoors to get off-color photos. We could use expired film, shoddily constructed Holgas, and Lomos to get specific effects, all without even getting into the darkroom.
Now, Photoshop isn’t just a replacement for blacklights and chemicals, it’s a replacement for what digital cameras lack severely: character. They’re all designed to get vanilla, one-size-fits-most color, accurate focus, zero distortion, no flaring or light leaks, grain-free photos. Their job has become to gather data as accurately as possible so that decisions can be made later, in Photoshop.
Ultimately, though, it ends up a nightmare for a person like me – I can’t stand to release a photo until I’m sure it’s exactly what I want that photo to look like. Sometimes I’ll go through 10 different versions before I release one, still to be unsatisfied. If I shot polaroids, though, my photography time would be spent shooting…not deciding between layer comps.
Atilus has a blog post up regarding what they feel an average website costs:
http://www.atilus.com/webpost/what_does_a_website_cost/
I disagree. For starters, they make the all-too-common mistake of trying to represent the cost of a website as a one-time-charge. Like buying a car, though, it’s not.
For starters, you have to pay to keep the website serving pages (hosting), the equivalent of gasoline. The majority of companies won’t take much of a hit there, though, since inexpensive shared hosting like what Dreamhost offers tends to get the job done for less than $100 a year. If your website is going to do anything more than the basics, though, dedicated hosting starts at around $300 a month for a moderately equipped server. A more popular website gets exponentially more expensive, though. You start to need load balancing servers; separate servers for databases, application, and storage; dedicated, redundant, tier-1 bandwidth; power redundancy and backup; data backup; co-location fees (or cooling and electricity costs if you’re a DIY kinda guy); and all the server administrators to keep it all humming. That’s really expensive – $5,000 a month bare minimum expensive.
If you want more than a very basic website that never gets updated or improved, which you should, then you’re going to need to do maintenance upgrades and additional work on the website throughout it’s life, just like you would your car (changing oil, getting a car wash, replacing air filters and windshield wipers). In my experience, companies with successful websites spend at least 5% of their initial website cost on improvements, monthly. Saving you from doing the math, a $10,000 up-front-cost website will translate to about $500 monthly in improvements and maintenance, and a $3,000 website invoices at just $150 a month. Again, though, this is a pretty minimal amount, and websites with more traffic or that are counting on their website to bring them sales are going to want to spend more money on making improvements and staying on top of trends.
The only way a website is a one-time, up-front cost is if you put one up and then go out of business.
The author of the linked post also made a wildly incorrect reference to the estimated cost of a website like Facebook being under $100,000. Well, Facebook has over 700 employees, and I guarantee you they didn’t each accept a check for $142 up front to cover everything they’d do for the company. My estimate, not researching any figures they’ve released, would be that Facebook costs around $200,000,000 annually to run, including all of their regular company expenses too. Considering their only product is a website, you do the math.
After buying a new car with an XM Radio receiver pre-installed, I poked around their website and figured I’d give it a shot. For about $13 a month I was going to get their ‘Everything’ service that included most of their channels, minus some of the ‘premium’ (read: celebrity bullshit) channels. I could listen online or in the car. Sounded like it was worth giving it a shot.
Two months later and here we are. I just got off the phone with a friendly, but not interested in retaining a customer, representative from XM Radio. They had switched the online listening to an additional service for $3 a month. Combined, I listen to XM about 3 hours a month, and most of the time it’s just as bad as regular radio with finding any sort of decent music on. The vast majority of their lineup is decades old music that they can license at ridiculously low rates. Now this? Forget it.
XM: Have fun paying for those multi-billion dollar satellites; I have a hunch that if you continue down this road you’ll find that people in a recession don’t need their music beamed down through the ozone after all.
So it’s been a while since my last update. Frankly, things have been nuts and I’ve been too stressed out to care to blog about it. On top of it all, I’ve been really trying to cut out any distractions (not doing as well as I would like, but hey, it’s a start) that I can.
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around a new-to-me framework for PHP. I’ve known about it for years and played with it a bit, but at the time it wasn’t quite up-to-par and so I never bothered. Now, though, it’s a lot more powerful and has a lot of the same functionality that I find myself writing up solutions for. I digress, though. Just know that once I get through all the testing and tinkering I’ll be able to whip together stuff even faster.
As usual, tax time is less than pleasant for me. Even paying over $1,000 to an accountant to prepare and file my taxes this year didn’t do me any good, since I got hit with a nice $1800 mistake. That’s money I don’t really have lying around to hand over to the IRS. I swear, every single time that I need to do something with taxes it turns out that I owe more than any estimates I or an accountant had previously prepared. I seriously thought that when I walked into my accountant this year that things were all set and I only owed a few hundred. Wrong. If it were only so simple. Side note: did you know the US tax code for 2006 was 67,204 pages? I’m not kidding.
The move to Austin went ridiculously awry. I’ll save the story for people who really, really want to hear it.
I haven’t been shooting at all since we moved, but I’m supposed to be shooting tomorrow. I forgot to call the model I am supposed to be working with tomorrow, though. Bah.
Sleeping and waking up has been really bad the last week or so. Normally I fall right asleep and I can wakeup just fine in the morning. Not lately, though. I take forever to fall asleep, wakeup throughout the night, and then hit the snooze button 34 times in the morning until finally forgetting to hit it and instead hitting ‘Reset’ and falling back asleep for an extra 2-3 hours. Then the last 2 nights I’ve tried shortening how long I sleep because when I over-sleep I get groggy and that’s the same feeling I’ve been having. Instead, though, I’m just tired all day.
I’m going to bed early tonight.
I initially wrote this during a brainstorming session for Effim, my web boutique, but I think it demonstrates an important thing that a lot of developers miss out on completely.
Many website developers take advantage of clients by delivering websites that just barely get the job done. They rely on hacks and shoddy, insecure code, and rarely perform adequate testing. This reduces their overhead, hence increasing their immediate profit. Unfortunately, this has created a climate where the majority of small businesses are frequently required to have their website started from scratch, throwing away the money, time, and lost revenue on the previous website.
Rather than live with the stress and guilt of providing solutions that barely stand, I focus on providing solid, extensible websites. By doing this, I reduce my short-term profit, but earn a client for many years that is going to continually be satisfied with the work that I do. Additionally, because the websites I create are extensible, my clients are able to start on a small budget and improve their websites over several years without incurring the cost of redeveloping their website each time with a new developer.
It’s been a hellishly busy past few days. The drive took longer than expected, we didn’t get an application into a place in time so we aren’t able to move-in until Monday, support requests for my website have increased, one of my clients is on the fritz, and there are still several variables to figure out. All in all, though, I think we’ve weathered the first portion of the move well, and now we have two days to catch our breath and prepare for the move into the new condo.
I’m sure I’ll dive more into the condo we found in a future post, but I’d like to let it become cemented before I bother scrounging for photos to post or blabbing about it.
It’s 10:44 PM on Sunday night. Tomorrow morning at 10AM I’m supposed pickup a Penske moving truck. After which I am supposed to load it, clean an entire house to like-new condition, and somehow manage to get to bed early enough to wake up the following morning (Tuesday) and drive 1,054 miles to Corpus Christi, TX with my girlfriend Sabrina and our menagerie-recently-reduced of two dogs, an iguana, and a parrotlet.
Wish me luck.
We found a house we wanted to lease in Austin on Monday, March 9th, with a move-in date of April 1st. We put an application for full price that evening, and we were notified that Thursday of the acceptance of the application. Our application had all of the details in it – rent, deposit, pets, period of time, how long a lockbox would be on, what we owe for repairs, the lockbock withdrawal fee, trip charges, et cetera. We thought everything would be fantastic. We were wrong.
When we weren’t contacted immediately by the owner’s agent, I contacted our agent and inquired. She reassured me that he would be contacting us shortly thereafter and that she’d make sure of it. This happened several times over. I finally received a lease to sign 12 days later on the 24th of March–a mere 8 days before we were scheduled to move in. Unfortunately, that lease wasn’t quite up to par.
Instead of filling out the lease according to what was agreed to in the application, the owners and/or their agent saw it fit to increase everything on us save for our rent and deposits. My agent told me she looked over everything and it looked good, so when I started reading through and everything was doubled, tripled, and cranked up 21 times over what it was supposed to be, I naturally cocked my eyebrow up and exclaimed, “What the fuck?”
I contacted my agent and informed her politely that not only did the lease have the address wrong (left off the unit number–it’s a duplex) but it was for completely different (and unfavorable) terms. She apologized and said she would talk to the owner’s agent and get back with me. That didn’t happen until today when I had informed her that I would be scratching the deal if I didn’t receive a suitably revised lease by 3:00pm my time.
Today I was sent a lease that had everything exactly the same as the first lease, only it had cut the period that a lockbox could be placed on the house down from an absurd 60 days to a reasonable 30 days. When I had the audacity to put my foot down and say something, my agent threatened that they would not be able to get my deposit of over $2,000 back. I informed her if the owner’s agent’s company was so foolish as to keep my deposit on an application when a lease with the same terms was not procured that I would simply take them to court. That motivated her to contact the owner’s agent and have him call me to try to save the deal.
Initially the phone call with Paul Smith, a REALTOR® with Prudential Realty and the owner’s agent, went well. He was cordial and seemed genuinely interested in getting us into his client’s property under amicable terms. When I explained the situation to him in moderate, but certainly not verbose, detail, he interrupted abrubtly and stated in a hasty tone, “You can get your deposit at the front office.” I inquired about having the deposit mailed back to me, to which Paul tauntingly responded, “No, I’m going to leave it here for you to come pickup”. Paul knows that I’m not yet located in Austin.
Because of the lack of knowledge and effort on part of my agent, Sara Wiginton at Sky Realty, and the lack of compassion by Paul Smith and the owners of the property at 1907 Winsted Ln, Austin, Tx, 78703, I will not have a place to relocate to on April 1st and will be forced to move in with relatives in Corpus Christi, TX.
In an effort to avoid any frivolous suits for libel, I’d like to affirm that the above is my opinion based on my own recollection of events and in no way should be construed as a legal testimony or verified facts.
Today (Tuesday) was my ‘day off’ before all of the craziness of packing and moving hits full force. I had two clients have last minute stuff come up, but luckily I was able to patch stuff together in time to go shoot some photos. It was a great last shoot in Tucson.
That’s all. You were expecting something longer?
Nude portraits offer a different perspective – a way to see yourself, unbundled and vulnerable, from the eyes of another, at least for some. For others, they’re visual memoirs of youthfulness or a way of pushing your boundaries and exploring new experiences. For others still, they carry a deeper meaning than all of that and can often be therapeutic.
Whatever the reason for them, I appreciate nude portraits for the fact that they paint a truer projection of a person than any other form of photography that I know of. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a retired businessman or a college student, a war-hardened veteran or a child-hardened soccer mom; the simple fact is that your clothes are the glue to your façade and without them, you’re vulnerable and true.
I feel quite strongly that everybody should have nude portraits done of themselves at least once, whether by a friend or stranger, photographer or not. They’re one of those experiences so many people miss out on because their afraid of consequences that are largely nonexistent. There are no laws forbidding it (in America, at least). There are no health side effects. Children and parents alike will not outright reject it. You will probably not be fired for your job. In fact, you’ll probably feel more confident about yourself and realize that if you open your mind to new experiences that there’s more to life than the hustle and bustle that currently encompasses it.
I nearly always can make myself available to shoot nude portraits of a person. Considering the fears people have going in, I do not require a model/image release or right to publication for the photos, though I do encourage everybody to consider allowing publication. I avoid using studio lights and equipment if possible, and create a very comfortable environment. I want to see the real you…not you being afraid of the camera. I’ll happily provide you with a CD with the selected shots from the shoot, and arrangements for prints can be made. Whether you’re young or old, male or female, tall or short, fat or fit makes no difference to me.
I was just chit-chatting with a model on the infamous ModelMayhem and for whatever reason I explained a bit about the process behind how I come up with ideas for photos and why I shoot what I shoot. I know that a lot of photographers, primarily simple-minded Tusconian ones that are focused on the model-photo niche, aren’t really big fans of my work. I think that part of the reason comes from the way that I approach shooting, so explaining that might help.
First, a really brief bit of background. I started getting more seriously interested in photography when, as sad as it is, my parents opened a franchise portrait studio in a mall in Tucson. I never really had a whole lot of interest in photography before that past what could be considered slightly above-average. I had a cheap digital point and shoot that I knew next to nothing about and would take crappy photos of friends around school, feeling awkward all the while. I started doing photography at the portrait studio when it opened – I was 15. I took what plenty of people thought were wonderful photos that I now know were terrible, but they made someone happy. Something about being able to take photos of someone that they really cherish has really stuck with me. I digress, though, to continue on with this blog post before I throw it all away.
After I shot mall portraits for a few years I quit doing photography all together for a while. I started getting interested in learning more again when I stumbled across ModelMayhem and got inspired by some of the work there and the fact that I could shoot someone other than fat friends and family members. For about a year I learned, bought gear, and shot okay photos. I think most of all what I did was fail, and it’s from that failure that ultimately came knowledge that can only be obtained by failing. I’m just lucky enough to have only had to fail once and to have done it so quickly.
I learned that photography isn’t about impeccable exposure, fantastic poses, breathtaking lighting, or spot-on composition. I learned that photography isn’t about the camera and equipment. Instead, photography, I realized, is about the content. All the technical prowess won’t make me want to look at a shot of an egg on a white surface any more – the exposure, lighting, and composition all only really lend a hand in presenting the content.
Now, I have absolutely zero interest in creating technically well done images for the sake of creating technically well done images. Instead, I’m more interested in creating photos that have a deeper meaning to them and make people think, or that are simply pretty and fun to look at.
—
To the meat of what I wanted to say here, though….
When I get inspired to shoot something (typically from other photos, life experiences, or through music), it becomes an artistic bio-rythm for about 2-6 weeks. I’m a very emotionally stable person, but I’ve got artistic impulses that are akin to bipolar disorder. I’ll drop everything in my life to try to get the shots that I want, and then I’ll just lose interest whether or not I got the shots. I end up with series that are really only a single shoot because I lost interest too quickly. I do tend to have cycles of inspiration, though. I’ll want to express something, lose interest, and then it will come back a few months later. There’s still hope that I will be able to create some of the series that I’ve started.
Occasionally I want to do something that’s inspired more by my morals and compassion, and typically I’m not quite as artistically attached to the project as I am emotionally attached to it. I don’t have the same blinding passion to create the photos, but I don’t lose the urge, either. A couple examples are genuine portraits of impoverished people (homeless, poor families, etc) that can’t really afford to get portraits done otherwise and nude portraits of just about anybody (more in another post on that). I care too much for my own good, and I really wish I could give more back to people for the talents that I have.
This post has already grown too long, so I’ll leave it where it’s at and follow up on the tangents in follow-up posts.
Just wanted to say I’ve not lost track of my blogging, yet. I’ve just not had a whole lot of time or reason to blog the last few days, so things have been a bit quiet.
I just finished the final touches on a 60-hour web project a little bit ago here and I’m preparing the documentation (read: waiting for iMovie to finish importing a 25mb, 16min .mov clip…it’s so pathetic) so that I can bundle it all up and do delivery on the project by tomorrow morning. I’m quite excited about that. 
That also means that I’m just that much closer to being ready to make the move to Austin. As soon as I get all of this stuff finished I’ll be joining Sabrina in the packing and deep cleaning effort. Yay!
There are a lot of things in life that are huge problems that the vast majority of people don’t have to even know about because other people have solved them for them. Some of those issues are sewage (what happens after you flush?), making sure your tires don’t fall apart while you’re driving 120mph, and making sure that cyanide doesn’t end up in your Fruity Pebbles. Another one of those issues is called “character encoding” and it’s a royal pain in the ass of a problem for anybody that does programming/development on a computer.
I’ll spare you the details, but it should suffice to say that character encoding has to do with making sure that your computer knows what the hell character to display when your French electronic-pen-pal writes you a message. It’s also the reason you sometimes see strange empty boxes where a letter or symbol used to go (well, lack of understanding about character encoding causes that). Basically, you should really be more thankful that some computer guys and girls are willing to stay up late at night to solve problems so that the rest of you get to see pretty characters that make sense instead of garbled messes.
Random, but I just skirted across a photographer’s profile on ModelMayhem that started out with “I’m a fine art photographer with technical skill…”. That’s as far down the profile as I got before I loaded up the photos and proceeded to nearly spit my drink on the computer.
Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or get angry at MM. Perhaps that’s why it’s so addictive…it’s like sensory overload.
=P
I hate how hot laptops get. You can’t possibly use one for any length of time on your lap, and using one to type is a sticky-sweaty mess. Obviously I understand why they get so hot, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like it.
This 5ft diamondback crossed our path while we were hiking and shooting the other day.
Okay so it wasn’t much of an ‘encounter’, but we were out hiking and shooting yesterday when one of us spotted this guy in the brush right before we walked by. He was on his way to cross the hiking path we were on, and he continued on even though we were there about 5-8′ away. He didn’t seem to bothered since he remained extended and didn’t coil. He was still tasting the air, too, as you can see in the photo. Pretty crazy little encounter with one of the most notorious and infamous snakes in the US. Glad we all got away unscathed!
I think you can gauge the humbleness of a person by how much they identify with wild animals. This strings off of an earlier post regarding civilization, but doesn’t really fit in as part of that one.
My theory is as follows: if a person is awkward and distant in interactions with wild animals, or more specifically, can not sympathize with wild animals, that such a person is very likely to have a higher view of themselves than of those around them. They are less likely to demonstrate compassion towards those around them, and more likely to be open to ideas that they are not familiar with.
Thoughts?
I posted up a new little ‘Page’ on this blog detailing more of what I do web work wise. I’ve been doing freelance web work for 4 years now, but I’ve focused on my own portfolio of sites more than developing for others for the majority of that. Recently I decided to go ahead and pursue putting my web skills to use designing and developing for clients. It provides me with an opportunity to have a more consistent workload that keeps my brain fresh, and it provides additional income for paying the bills.
At the moment, I’ve got a bunch of client work on my plate keeping me from working on putting my own website together, and as much as that is an excuse, it’s really the truth. I’ve got roughly 65 hours in the queue with another 50 waiting to be added (I’m not accepting any additional non-urgent jobs until April), and I am moving from Tucson to Austin at the end of the month, so I have to watch out for that.
Anyways, if you feel like learning more about what it is that I do, head on over to the new page.
