Hi all,
About a year ago, I decided to start building a web site to showcase my photography using Blocs. At that stage I was an absolute newby in web development. I must say I am pretty proud of the result at:
https://www.rjlphoto.nl
Looking forward to your thoughts.
I must admit this would not have worked without Adrian (Vibralogix for member management and the web shop), Jannis (Iconic Gallery and Volt), Eldar, the Blocs app and the Brics and Forum community. Thanks to you all!
Rob
Hi Rob:
I like your site. Nice work.
My own opinion but a darker color for the text might look better, but then again, I am NO designer.
I am wondering if there should be a picture at the top of the page?
Nice work!
Rich the Weather Guy
Hi Rich,
Thanks for your remarks.
On the picture; when you login as member the picture you uploaded will be shown there.
I experimented with the “darkness” of the text, for me this shade of grey look a bit more relaxed for the eye. But that is “to taste” offcourse and I am no designer as well.
Rob
Hi Rob,
Well done on your first website and great to see a nice collaboration of people helping to pull it together ! nice one.
@WeatherguyNH hit the nail on the head with the image on the opening page - one thing most website developers struggle with is photos…but as you are a photographer I would love to see a nice big image on the top or a slide showcasing some great ones you have - it will be like - BOOM! LOOK AT ME! and then I start reading about the man behind the lens!
Great work though and keep it up!
Hi Adie,
Thanks for your suggestion and it makes sense. I added a gallery on the front page to “show-off” a bit.
Blocs and the “Bric community” indeed deliver a wealth of add-ons the really help to build a function rich and goo looking website.
Rob
Hmmmmm…I can’t get your site to load now?
Wait a sec…finally loaded.
Not sure if those great photos are slowing the load time down?
LOVE the pics!!!
Rich the Weather Guy
Yes, much better with then excellent pics - and loaded quite quickly for me, although I think they could be optimised a bit more. I downloaded one to see the file size and it came back at 1.7mb, which is a lot if all of them in the slideshow are the same size.
With photography, like my animal portraits, it’s always a compromise in quality over speed, but I use Handbrake and can get them down (at about a 2000px wide size) to about 300k. Just noticeable in that they’ve been compressed, but nothing that the everyday user would think about.
For me finding the balance between “speed” and “quality” has always been difficult; personally I believe a great picture should be printed as least on A2 size and hang on the wall ;-).
On the site I choose to go for quality. I get you point on speed, especially on the opening page, So I reduced JPG quality to 80% now to reduce file size. I hope they will travel faster to the US now.
Thanks for your feedback and kind remarks.
Rob
I totally agree Rob, and you and I need to showcase our art, but if people are having to wait around for a page to load on a slow connection, then our work doesn’t get seen when they click away. I’d really aim to get them below 1mb.
Try running a few through Image Optim (NOT Handbrake, been a long week!) at different settings and see what you think (do it on copies of your originals, as it ‘bins’ them and replaces with the optimised versions in the same folder!).
Just for the hell of it, I took one of your pics and ran it through Image Optim. The first pic - original was 818kb and the Image Optim - 2nd pic - (at 75% jpeg quality and normal setting in the preferences) reduced it to 243kb, so over 75% saving and not a lot of difference for the general user. Whether this forum does anything to the uploaded pics, I don’t know, but here you are. IO seems to have a much better encoding engine than Photoshop/Affinity etc for lower file sizes.
Anyway, I’m not here to force you down any route, just sharing my thoughts and they are very lovely pictures - and well done on the site, I’ll have to rework mine up to that standard!
Thanks Trevor!
I wil do some experimenting as well, would be good to get an understanding when pictures start to breakup.
Will keep you posted 
Rob
