I have a photography website.

I'm really, really trying (with my lovely wife's pushy-persuasion) to take my photography hobby more seriously. It's always just been one of those "that would be neat to take a photo of someday" type of things, but now I want it to be more of a "I need to take a photo of that because it sounds fun and exciting and I need to do something with my life" type of things.

Most of my work tends to focus on the abandoned; old abandoned cars and structures. I've also taken some great landscapes with waterfalls. I also plan on adding a section of "Action" shots to the portfolio that will likely be entirely shots of R/C racing.

Anyway, the first step is getting my photos online where people can see them and show them to people who can show them to more people and maybe I'll get some pats on the back. So, I put together my own portfolio site, www.chromadigitalphoto.com which I hope to keep updated and add to periodically. I plan on adding a store with prints to it, but I need to get that built and it all just takes time.

Check it out, share it with people, tell me what you think. I'm (generally) pretty receptive to constructive criticism. 

Nice photos Nexus.
I was surprised to find more photos in the individual categories simply by clicking it's main page photo. 

Yep. And if you wait around a bit you get a slideshow. Thanks for the kind words.

Nexus - Spent quite a bit of time on your site and really enjoyed the pictures.  I've got to say though that I really found navigation strange and difficult.  I don't even know if I saw everything.  I hope I did.  Had I not loved the content so much, I think I would have aborted my visit in the first few minutes, because of the navigation problems.  Maybe it's just me, but I think it needs some serious help.  As long as I was there (quite a while!), I never got the feeling I was in control.  I'd be interested in some of the other guys thought about it.

...Tiger
 

To be completely honest I'm not happy with the navigation either, but with the backend I'm given to work with I don't have a ton of control over it. I think the problem could be largely solved by a simple "prev / next" button for the gallery slider, but I have yet to determine if I can implement that easily. For what it's worth, you can either let the gallery slider advance itself (every few seconds) or you can click each picture to advance it manually.

Thanks for the feedback - I'm definitely looking into better navigation since it bothers not just you, but me too. 

You should get off squarespace and use wordpress on a real host.  Let me know if you need any help with that.  We could probably host you for half what you may be paying.

When I got this whole idea for a site I went to Wordpress first. I installed it locally and messed with it for hours. I was never happy, I didn't like the backend and although it gave me a lot of control I also felt very overwhelmed. Squarespace (among others) came highly recommended by the photography community of Reddit r/Photography and, honestly, I'm way happier this way. Thanks for the suggestion, though. Been there. Done that.

No worries, just trying to offer you some help.  I've used a lot of CMSs, maybe all of them, and Wordpress is really just an amazing piece of work.  It is the number one CMS today for good reasons.  If you are new at this I can see how you would be overwhelmed.

Besides the navigational issue already mentioned some other feedback I would make is the way your website is built you won't ever get very good SEO.  It's tough for photographer gallery style websites since they are all trying to promote visually and don't have much text in them to index.

I really was impressed by how much Wordpress is capable of, especially being free and open source (WOO!). But yeah, like you said, it's overwhelming, especially when looking at things like plugins. Why are there 300 plugins that all do the same damn thing?! The other part of Wordpress that bugged me was it comes across as a blogging platform first and a "portfolio" second. The portfolio side of things is what appealed to me and SquareSpace makes that painfully simple.

And I'm not expecting much in terms of SEO: I expect my work to be found through redirects and word-of-mouth, not search results.

Plus, I think I fixed my navigation problem! Through some CSS wizardry I enabled "Prev" and "Next" buttons on the bottom right and left of each page. (You can also use your arrow keys.) Does this help the issues you guys disliked? I'm happier with it now.

Wordpress originally was a blogging platform but has evolved into a full CMS.  There are many plugins that do the same thing, but different.  You need to figure out which one bests suits you and your website.  Or make your own plugin.

I think the labels help a lot.  Now people can see that there is more to see. 

For those interested the "SHOP" (store) section of my site is fully functional, although not yet completely stocked. If you are interested in a print (I hope you are) feel free to check it out.

www.chromadigitalphoto.com/shop
www.etsy.com/shop/chromadigital

i find your photography bitchin.  I've got many framed art rusted hotrods, i usually use the weathered barn frames for these.  i'm very active outdoors (when i'm not rc'n) and love those serene shot too.  Keep up the good work.  Oh and next time we're racin klamath, you'll have to follow me home as i have a secret fishing spot.  That secret spot happens to have an old sedan delivery from the 30's fully rusted w/bullet holes, fully abandoned in nature.  When i saw it i had to take some pics, but you can do it justice like it deserves.  It's fairly hidden and easy to get to as well.

Hell yes! That's the old junk I love! Thanks for the kind words and the help. I definitely want to check out this old sedan.

After some deliberation, I (again) adjusted the site. I'm about 10,000 times happier with it now. Navigation is even easier and there's some super-nice transition effects as well as a "gallery view" built into the nav-bar. Also, some color-keying that I think helps things stand out.

Good job Nexus.  I like it like this.  The G+ link and lack of F link is classy.  F the F link.  The disabled right mouse is a little 1990's, but overall very well done.

"F link." Heh, I like that. I don't have an F to link to anyway.
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The disabled right mouse is a little 1990's, but overall very well done.
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Yeah, I'm not sure what else to do to keep people from right click>Save As... ya, know? Those are full-resolution photos and I don't really want people just... stealing them. Truth be told, you must have right clicked for a reason or else you wouldn't have noticed it...

...or you just want to view page source.

I almost always right click to view source, and I did view your source because disabling the right click does not stop one from doing so.  As to saving the photos, that is why so many photographer sites use that old strategy, so I just do full screen (or whatever resolution I need) screen grabs if I want a image.  If you're on Linux PrtScn, Windows also I believe.  Alt-PrtScn gets you the current active window.  On OS X Command + Shift + 3 for the full screen, Command + Shift + 4 for a crosshairs to select the screen area you want and Command + Shift + 4 then space to select any open window.
OS X has a nifty crop tool built into the preview applet that lets you trim off silly stuff like borders or even bits of a image you don't need plus a very handy scaling tool.
PrtScn on Windows just copies the screen capture to the clipboard so you have a extra step to paste it into some application like paint or whatever.  Linux saves your PrtScn's to the desktop, same as OS X.
My suggestion to photographers is if you are really worried about your photos you ought be be watermarking them, anything else is moot.  I'm pretty sure w00d and I discussed Internet traceable watermarks in another thread if you are really really worried.

There is NO truly effective way to protect your images while they are on-line!

This said all my images are designed for WEB viewing only, what this means non of my images are offered at resolution that would be useful for printing. Not unless they wanted a 1" x 2" print, LOL. I would recommend you never make your full-res images available ... This means reducing the size for WEB use and visually water making them. And yes a watermark can be photo edited out but when they do this it simply proves intent to steal. Then this becomes an assent when seeking compensation.

Only people that need or should have access to your full-res images are the people who are doing your print work and for that, their store front if worth anything would only provide re-sized images for your customers to choose from.

Oh as for the disabled right-click, I simply turn off JAVA which gives back my right-click control. The only time this becomes a challenge (but not impossible, there I would look at the source) when image viewer is flash-based and there for sake of simplicity it's only a matter of doing a screen-capture.

And YES, I have used the right-click on your site but in my defense I was looking to quote your text during our resent discussion on Google+. It was fair-use while I was talking to you ... But NEVER to steal your images ... In fact the one time I did a screen capture of your images was when I was creating your blurb As you can see the right-click didn't even slow me down.

Again best way to protect images is by making them of limited use, in this case by not offering them up at full-res!

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Yeah, I agree with all that's being said regarding the right-click. I'm well aware that it doesn't stop people if they're determined: I've screen captured plenty of stuff that had right-click disabled or photos that open in "lightboxes" when I want to save a copy.

My personal point-of-view on it is that I'm not sure there's really that many people savvy enough with tech to know that they can screencap a photo. I see enough people take pictures of their monitor with their cellphone that proves this theory. So, although I realize it won't stop everybody, it'll slow most people down. (And I think watermarks are tacky.)

Yes watermarks do diminish our photos, but to be somewhat clearer I'm only suggesting visible watermarks for our smaller WEB images, or images where we intend to limit teh usability. As for our valued full res-images or the images that will ultimately be printed the community recommends invisible watermarking which would be embedded into our images. Unfortunately this generally is a paid service and we need an (software, usually built into the more popular photo editors) appropriate way to read them but the benefit is they are invisible and pretty near impossible to remove. Regardless, watermarking (either invisible or visible) certainly is an option therefor a personal choice. However I would repeat my suggestion or the only thing I would be amendment in recommending is we shouldn't give the plebs the opportunity to grab or make available our full-res images, keep em close keep em safe! FYI: Only putting it out there, if not for you then for our 'searchers and lurkers'

LOL, I have had a BOT come into my Photobucket account which scooped ALL my images. Then the BOTS owner offered MY images to HIS users, an advertising based website which claimed the photos he was providing were all Royalty Free, FREE of charge. Although this guy was obviously an amateur, a 'script kiddie' as he was easily found and blocked. Yes, this was certainly my own fault due to mistakes (I hadn't set the correct license) I hadn't protected myself at the time, but now I've learned my lesson albeit a lesson learned the hard way!

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