Re: OT my website

On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 22:47:41 +0000, MVP <mr.nice@*nospam*softhome.net>
wrote:

>I've just spent the day at the computer and just uploaded my new
>website. if any techy-folk feel like a few minutes looking at naked
>women I'd appreciate some feedback on the site (not the women, the
>website ;o),
>I'm a better photographer than I am website designer.
>www.mvp-fine-art.co.uk
>
>thanks muchly folks.
>
>
>Regards.
>Mark.(AKA, Mr.Nice.)

Like it... Nothing overdone, just gets to the point mostly.

Couple of comments - I don't like tables with borders. I think it
would look better with border = 0 IMHO.

I would also choose a minimum screen res - 800 x 600 probably and fix
the table widths to fit in that width. On a high res screen the
content spreads very wide and makes it look disjointed.

I'd also try to get all the thumbnails to a single width (which mostly
they are). The thumbnails also lack definition - have you
experimented with larger thumbnails but higher JPEG compression to
keep the overall page data size the same? Might look better (or
worse)!

While I'm here, I really like some of your photography, some seems a
bit 'contrived' but there are some really good images there.

Have you thought about online ordering? Really easy to do - someone
else does the printing and mailing stuff for you and you take the
money...


--

Tim Hobbs

'58 Series 2 88" aka "Stig"
'77 101FC Ambulance aka "Burrt"
'03 Volvo V70

My Landies? http://www.seriesii.co.uk
Barcoding? http://www.bartec-systems.com
Tony Luckwill web archive at http://www.luckwill.com

>>While I'm here, I really like some of your photography, some seems a
>>bit 'contrived' but there are some really good images there.
>
>Contrived, hmm, well it is all 'set-up' and maybe that shows on some.

Hey, being a critic is the easiest job out there... I'm about to pick
up a camera again properly for the first time in years - going to
start with ducks on the local pond and work from there. I'll post my
first efforts so you can reciprocate!

>
>>Have you thought about online ordering? Really easy to do - someone
>>else does the printing and mailing stuff for you and you take the
>>money...
>
>I'm going to set-up an online ordering via another website, I still
>print everything myself by-hand to ensure quality, and for the prices
>I charge I should be sacrificeing my first-born at the same time.
>

www.dipinto.co.uk



--

Tim Hobbs

'58 Series 2 88" aka "Stig"
'77 101FC Ambulance aka "Burrt"
'03 Volvo V70

My Landies? http://www.seriesii.co.uk
Barcoding? http://www.bartec-systems.com
Tony Luckwill web archive at http://www.luckwill.com

On or around Mon, 21 Mar 2005 23:38:58 +0000, Tim Hobbs
<[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:

>On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 22:47:41 +0000, MVP <mr.nice@*nospam*softhome.net>
>wrote:
>
>>I've just spent the day at the computer and just uploaded my new
>>website. if any techy-folk feel like a few minutes looking at naked
>>women I'd appreciate some feedback on the site (not the women, the
>>website ;o),
>>I'm a better photographer than I am website designer.
>>www.mvp-fine-art.co.uk
>>
>>thanks muchly folks.
>>
>>
>>Regards.
>>Mark.(AKA, Mr.Nice.)
>
>Like it... Nothing overdone, just gets to the point mostly.
>
>Couple of comments - I don't like tables with borders. I think it
>would look better with border = 0 IMHO.
>
>I would also choose a minimum screen res - 800 x 600 probably and fix
>the table widths to fit in that width. On a high res screen the
>content spreads very wide and makes it look disjointed.

I'm with you on both those points. Borders around the frames don't add
anything. A single-pixel line might be OK, or no borders at all.

As to resolution - 800x600 is starting to fade, now, although I know people
who still stick to it ("because it makes the buttons and writing nice and
big" - don't seem to have noticed that you can tweak the sizes of such in
modern windows) more or less religiously.

most people seem to be using higher resolutions, these days. I tend to
scale pictures for web posting (other then for such as photo.net) so they
fit in an 800x600 window, which means that you can see it all by going
full-screen if you still run 800x600, or it'll pretty much fit inside your
browser on 1024x768 or above. I run 1280x960 here, and an 800x600 picture
still appears a reasonable size. Apart from sites such as photo.net which
are about photo critique (and thus you want to lose the minimum detail, so
no re-sizing) this works fine. There's absolutely no point in having
pictures at 3000x2000 resolution except for ones that people may want to
print - almost no-one has a monitor which will show it without rescaling
anyway.

I think, for a photo-promo site, I'd go for a 3-level approach; which makes
the coding more hassle, granted; have a page of thumbnails, clicking 'em
gets a medium-resolution picture (say within 800x600 as above, fairly well
compressed to something like 100KB, so it's fast loading) and then have a
"large" button which gets you something like 1600x1200 and less compression.
Unless you want to sell full-res ones, in which case, the 800x600 ish one
can have a "buy this picture" button.

just my €0.02-worth.
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.fsnet.co.uk my opinions are just that
"Festina Lente" (Hasten slowly) Suetonius (c.70-c.140) Augustus, 25

>>
>>just my €0.02-worth.
>
>I don't want anything bigger than 500 or maybe 600 on the longest side
>as image theft is a very real threat and you can print an 8x10 from an
>800x600 image. still thinking the ordering system through though...
>

Why not watermark them? That prevents anyone printing them, but they
can see a high-res picture to really evaluate the quality of the image
(at least in a technical sense).

This is how all the major stock libraries work, supplying comping
images at about 600 pixels wide to allow concept work and client
approval. If you want the print-quality original without watermark
you hand over your $300 or thereabouts...


--

Tim Hobbs

'58 Series 2 88" aka "Stig"
'77 101FC Ambulance aka "Burrt"
'03 Volvo V70

My Landies? http://www.seriesii.co.uk
Barcoding? http://www.bartec-systems.com
Tony Luckwill web archive at http://www.luckwill.com

On or around Tue, 22 Mar 2005 13:35:35 +0000, MVP
<mr.nice@*nospam*softhome.net> enlightened us thusly:

>I don't want anything bigger than 500 or maybe 600 on the longest side
>as image theft is a very real threat and you can print an 8x10 from an
>800x600 image. still thinking the ordering system through though...

you won't get much quality though. I suspect that with suitable
image-processing gear you'd get as good results from 640x480, say.

If you print from 800x600 to 8x6", you're only looking at 100 dpi - typical
glossy magazines run at about 1200, as you're no doubt aware. You can't
stop people making off with images you post on the web, though in theory
it's copyright theft, probably. I guess if you catch people selling your
images, you'd stand a chance of getting redress, but I'd not hold me breath
even so.

'course, you can compress them heavily, but that tends to look bad. If
you're looking to sell pictures, then I think you have to have a reasonable
preview and accept that some people will content themselves with nicking
that, rather than paying for a proper version.

's a bit like the music industry - they, too, have a huge problem with
copyright theft - personally, I reckon the way forward is to make the music
available for download sufficiently cheaply that most people will pay to be
legitimate, and accept the tightwads who won't as unavoidable losses.

--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.fsnet.co.uk my opinions are just that
In Touch: Get in touch with yourself by touching yourself.
If somebody is watching, stop touching yourself.
from the Little Book of Complete B***ocks by Alistair Beaton.

On or around Tue, 22 Mar 2005 14:00:35 +0000, Tim Hobbs
<[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:

>>>
>>>just my €0.02-worth.
>>
>>I don't want anything bigger than 500 or maybe 600 on the longest side
>>as image theft is a very real threat and you can print an 8x10 from an
>>800x600 image. still thinking the ordering system through though...
>>
>
>Why not watermark them? That prevents anyone printing them, but they
>can see a high-res picture to really evaluate the quality of the image
>(at least in a technical sense).
>
>This is how all the major stock libraries work, supplying comping
>images at about 600 pixels wide to allow concept work and client
>approval. If you want the print-quality original without watermark
>you hand over your $300 or thereabouts...

that's a good point, and one I'd not thought of. proper watermarking w0ould
be difficult to remove.

--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.fsnet.co.uk my opinions are just that
In Touch: Get in touch with yourself by touching yourself.
If somebody is watching, stop touching yourself.
from the Little Book of Complete B***ocks by Alistair Beaton.

I put nothing larger than 600 x 400 and whatever on mine because I do not
want people filching my pictures, if they want sommat bigger they can pay
for it.


--
Larry
Series 3 rust and holes


"Austin Shackles" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On or around Mon, 21 Mar 2005 23:38:58 +0000, Tim Hobbs
> <[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:
>
>
> I'm with you on both those points. Borders around the frames don't add
> anything. A single-pixel line might be OK, or no borders at all.
>
> As to resolution - 800x600 is starting to fade, now, although I know
people
> who still stick to it ("because it makes the buttons and writing nice and
> big" - don't seem to have noticed that you can tweak the sizes of such in
> modern windows) more or less religiously.
>
> most people seem to be using higher resolutions, these days. I tend to
> scale pictures for web posting (other then for such as photo.net) so they
> fit in an 800x600 window, which means that you can see it all by going
> full-screen if you still run 800x600, or it'll pretty much fit inside your
> browser on 1024x768 or above. I run 1280x960 here, and an 800x600 picture
> still appears a reasonable size. Apart from sites such as photo.net which
> are about photo critique (and thus you want to lose the minimum detail, so
> no re-sizing) this works fine. There's absolutely no point in having
> pictures at 3000x2000 resolution except for ones that people may want to
> print - almost no-one has a monitor which will show it without rescaling
> anyway.
>
> I think, for a photo-promo site, I'd go for a 3-level approach; which
makes
> the coding more hassle, granted; have a page of thumbnails, clicking 'em
> gets a medium-resolution picture (say within 800x600 as above, fairly well
> compressed to something like 100KB, so it's fast loading) and then have a
> "large" button which gets you something like 1600x1200 and less
compression.
> Unless you want to sell full-res ones, in which case, the 800x600 ish one
> can have a "buy this picture" button.
>
> just my ?0.02-worth.
> --
> Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.fsnet.co.uk my opinions are just that
> "Festina Lente" (Hasten slowly) Suetonius (c.70-c.140) Augustus, 25

And I have printed acceptably at 20 x16 from 1200 x 960 with interpolation
and there is obviosly a rule here, the larger the size the further you stand
back to take it all in so there has to be an optimum somewhere

--
Larry
Series 3 rust and holes


"MVP" <mr.nice@*nospam*softhome.net> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 14:19:14 +0000, Austin Shackles
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I've printed 8x10 from a 640x480 at 100dpi and it's ok to hang on a
> wall as long as you don't look at it closer than about 12" away.
>
> I work on the theory that whatever is on the web can and will be taken
> and printed, I want the lack of quality in a print to be obvious,
> easily achieved by the limited file size. I think my sizing is about
> right.
>
>
> Regards.
> Mark.(AKA, Mr.Nice.)
> --
> _________________________________________
> 1984 110 CSW 2.5(na)D
> (3,000 rivets flying in close formation)
> www.4x4info.info
> www.mvp-fine-art.co.uk
> www.markvarleyphoto.co.uk
> _________________________________________
>
>
>
> ................................................................
> Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access
> >>>> at http://www.TitanNews.com <<<<
> -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=-
>

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 14:19:14 +0000, Austin Shackles wrote:

> If you're looking to sell pictures, then I think you have to have a
> reasonable preview and accept that some people will content
> themselves with nicking that, rather than paying for a proper
> version.

As Mark is professional photographer maybe he ought to look at one of
the commercial (aka pay) watermarking services that are out there.
Your identity is encoded into the file by altering the odd bit here
and there in recoverable manner that is horribly hard to remove.

> 's a bit like the music industry - they, too, have a huge problem
> with copyright theft - personally, I reckon the way forward is to
> make the music available for download sufficiently cheaply that most
> people will pay to be legitimate,

This appears to be the way the music industry is going.

As to Marks site, I agree the table borders are a bit naff and I don't
really like the static background image that the foreground scrolls
over. Also when clicking an image it might be nice to get a proper
page with the image in rather than just the image. I'm guilty of that
at the moment though but it will change fairly soon in the big move to
PHP...

--
Cheers [email protected]
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

On or around Wed, 23 Mar 2005 00:18:15 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice"
<[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:

>On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 14:19:14 +0000, Austin Shackles wrote:
>
>> If you're looking to sell pictures, then I think you have to have a
>> reasonable preview and accept that some people will content
>> themselves with nicking that, rather than paying for a proper
>> version.
>
>As Mark is professional photographer maybe he ought to look at one of
>the commercial (aka pay) watermarking services that are out there.
>Your identity is encoded into the file by altering the odd bit here
>and there in recoverable manner that is horribly hard to remove.
>
>> 's a bit like the music industry - they, too, have a huge problem
>> with copyright theft - personally, I reckon the way forward is to
>> make the music available for download sufficiently cheaply that most
>> people will pay to be legitimate,
>
>This appears to be the way the music industry is going.
>
>As to Marks site, I agree the table borders are a bit naff and I don't
>really like the static background image that the foreground scrolls
>over. Also when clicking an image it might be nice to get a proper
>page with the image in rather than just the image. I'm guilty of that
>at the moment though but it will change fairly soon in the big move to
>PHP...

I've done pages with images in with ordinary html - but then again, it's
more data and more files and doesn't really gain that much provided the
browsers out there are happy with opening image files. Obviously, lynx
ain't going to, for example, but then that's what the alternate text is for
(rather than what mickeysnot's deliberately non-standard pile of penc uses
it for).

--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.fsnet.co.uk my opinions are just that
In Touch: Get in touch with yourself by touching yourself.
If somebody is watching, stop touching yourself.
from the Little Book of Complete B***ocks by Alistair Beaton.

On Tuesday, in article <[email protected]>
[email protected] "Larry" wrote:

> And I have printed acceptably at 20 x16 from 1200 x 960 with interpolation
> and there is obviosly a rule here, the larger the size the further you stand
> back to take it all in so there has to be an optimum somewhere

It's a related effect to Depth of Field. There's a limit to the
resolution of the eye, and whether it's a "circle of confusion" or some
other lack of detail in the image, if it's small enough we can't see the
difference.

--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.

"I am Number Two," said Penfold. "You are Number Six."

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 07:30:03 +0000, Austin Shackles wrote:

>> Also when clicking an image it might be nice to get a proper
>> page with the image in rather than just the image. I'm guilty of
>> that at the moment though but it will change fairly soon in the big
>> move to PHP...
>
> I've done pages with images in with ordinary html - but then again,
> it's more data and more files

One extra file that builds the page given the filename of the image.
Extra data, yeah, but unless you are running a silly site crawling
with images for no reason other than eye candy not much more than a
kilobyte if that.

> ... and doesn't really gain that much ...

Apart from projecting a better image.

--
Cheers [email protected]
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

>
>noted ref the table borders, will get to that when I have the time.
>as for the static background, I like that feature so that'll stay.
>I agree ref the larger image not being on it's own page, I'll look
>into that also but it increases the workload somewhat.
>
>thanks ;o)
>
>
>Regards.
>Mark.(AKA, Mr.Nice.)

I think your is one of those sites that will grow over time, to the
point where it will become very hard to maintain as static pages. At
that point you'll want to reengineer it using PHP, ASP or somesuch.

There are plenty of photo-gallery products out there, some free and
some far from it. Some will incorporate online ordering,
meta-tagging, IPTC (?) tags and the like.

Out of interest, Mark, how much traffic do you get to your site - is
there a significant market for art photography online? I've always
thought of art as something you buy from a gallery or exhibition
rather than via the net.


--

Tim Hobbs

'58 Series 2 88" aka "Stig"
'77 101FC Ambulance aka "Burrt"
'03 Volvo V70

My Landies? http://www.seriesii.co.uk
Barcoding? http://www.bartec-systems.com
Tony Luckwill web archive at http://www.luckwill.com

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 10:54:09 +0000, Tim Hobbs wrote:

> I think your is one of those sites that will grow over time, to the
> point where it will become very hard to maintain as static pages.

Take note, Mark.

My weather site has grown slowly over the years (since 1999) and
really was a mishmash of orginal hand crafted code, code from an OS/2
WYSIWYG HTML editor and laterly Mozilla Composer. It did gain a style
sheet a couple of years ago that helped a bit but any other changes of
a vaugely site wise nature where just a PITA.

I've nearly finished moving over to a PHP based system and
co-ordinating the stylesheet better. Site wide changes are now nearly
all down to editing just the relevant file, not each individual page.
I get the feeling stuff loads faster as well but I can't think why the
server has much more work to do...

--
Cheers [email protected]
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 09:58:58 +0000, MVP wrote:

> That's help if someone was claiming a digital image as being their
> own, and it'd help me track the use of an image across the internet
> but my main threat is people printing their own copies instead of
> dipping into their pockets.

Fair point. Then your are lumbered with some form of visual deterant,
either a visible watermark or reducing the resolution and upping the
compression. Thus making any or decent sized prints not very nice.
Which is waht you are doing... B-)

> as for the static background, I like that feature so that'll stay.

I think what miffed me of was that I wanted to scroll the background
to see lower down the image. B-)

> I agree ref the larger image not being on it's own page, I'll look
> into that also but it increases the workload somewhat.

Overall using PHP or ASP will reduce the work load. Write a page that
displays the image supplied in a query string. Then when you add an
image to the main pages all you need to do extra is add the filname to
the URLs query string.

So <a href="filename"><img src="thumbnail"... /></a> becomes something
like <a href=view.php?f=filename><img src="thumbnail"... /></a>.

If you want to change something on the big image page you simply edit
that single view.php file and all your big images pages take on that
change.

--
Cheers [email protected]
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 12:00:51 +0000, MVP <mr.nice@*nospam*softhome.net>
wrote:

>though I intend
>rotating the nudes on the website every few weeks/months.

Isn't that a bit risky, given that most are nude back shots an all...

On or around Wed, 23 Mar 2005 12:10:55 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice"
<[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:

>Fair point. Then your are lumbered with some form of visual deterant,
>either a visible watermark or reducing the resolution and upping the
>compression. Thus making any or decent sized prints not very nice.
>Which is waht you are doing... B-)

all fair, but you want one decent-sized good resolution image as a sample of
what's available, IMHO. Needn't be anything especially saleable, but a
good, decent-sized (1200-ish pixel, say) image. There's a world of
difference between a large, clear, sharp sample image and a comment about
what resolution the images are available in if you buy 'em, IYSWIM.

--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.fsnet.co.uk my opinions are just that
"Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt"
(confound the men who have made our remarks before us.)
Aelius Donatus (4th Cent.) [St. Jerome, Commentary on Ecclesiastes]

>From that traffic I average 1 or 2 sales per month, 1 commission and 3
>or 4 private commissions per month.
>Most of my artistic stuff sells through 'real' galleries of which
>there are many in my area.
>most of the wildlife and landscapes go through stock libraries.
>

Any recommendations on stock libraries? I'm thinking of getting
involved in a venture based in part on stock photography (not wildlife
or landscape though) - what pitfalls should I be aware of?


--

Tim Hobbs

'58 Series 2 88" aka "Stig"
'77 101FC Ambulance aka "Burrt"
'03 Volvo V70

My Landies? http://www.seriesii.co.uk
Barcoding? http://www.bartec-systems.com
Tony Luckwill web archive at http://www.luckwill.com

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 14:18:15 +0000, MVP wrote:

> ooo techy techy talk, I'm a photographer remember 8o(

Ah but if you can handle F stops, exposure times, circles of
confusion, film speeds, filters, colour balance, lighting etc etc a
little bit of simple scripting shouldn't be a problem. B-) All you
need is a text editor, like notepad.

www.mvp-fine-art.co.uk is hosted on Linux based server with PHP 4.3.9
probably located in the US. So your scripting pages need to be written
in PHP. The online PHP manual is pretty good and the search side
fairly accurate in giving the best link at the top of the results
page. http://www.php.net/manual/en/

--
Cheers [email protected]
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 12:10:55 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>Fair point. Then your are lumbered with some form of visual deterant,
>either a visible watermark or reducing the resolution and upping the
>compression. Thus making any or decent sized prints not very nice.

I had this discussion with a client who insisted on using Flash in
order to prevent stuff being nicked. Seems a reasonable option.