On 12/22/2010 7:43 AM, Brian Swale wrote:
> . . .
> http://www.brianswale.com/
> I write my own code which tends to be laborious, and the only real downside
> is that I don't have an easy way to update the copyright dates.
Here, as viewer, rather than coder, I must disagree. It looks nicer now, and
the boxes may line up more often. But you
still don't have something MUCH more important that surface good looks. Where
in the name of all that is good and true
are the forward and back buttons in the galleries?
There are about a gazillion galleries out there, many with nice images. How do
you expect anyone who comes across yours
to stay and look at the images when you make it so inconvenient?
BTW
Q: How you can tell when a photographer has decided to sell images on the web?
A: When the images on their site suddenly
get so small that they are hard to enjoy and one can't tell whether they would
be worth buying or not.
> AG has the answer for that, but I'm not sure I want to take the time to learn
> his system he uses.
The admin system for it is slow and awkward. I disliked it a great deal.
> I write using pure html, some of it is code no longer preferred by the
> cognoscienti (spelling?) of the web.
Might you be making the mistake of conflating tool with result? If you want to
spend lots of time doing slow coding,
either because it it an enjoyable end in itself (Yup, been there, done that.)
or because you have nothing better to do,
that's just excellent. However, if the end result isn't right, it still isn't
worth trying to use. And unlike the 40
foot long scarf of the compulsive knitter, there's no one to gift it to. :-)
The vast majority of potential customers have neither slow internet connections
nor inadequate computers, so use of
Java, JS, CMS, PHP, etc. is simply not a problem. An active site area of more
than 840x600 pixels might be worth
considering, too. Most gallery and gallery design software sizes to fill the
browser window, which is much more
attractive that a small gallery in the corner of a sea of blank blue.
> For searching etc I really need to learn php and Mysql (sic) but my time
> seems to be overtaken by a host of other tasks, and it's not getting any
> better.
So why NOT just find and use a canned solution? You drive a car somebody else
built, live in a house somebody else
built, wear clothes someone else made, use a computer . . . you get the idea.
The few people actually making money from their art photography are spending
time making images and promoting them, not
coding HTML. You may recall Bob saying that he has a web site because it is
expected by those who buy his images - but
almost all actual sales are in person in galleries or restaurants.
> I seem to be losing my focus (excuse the pun) on photography.
If that's a real shift in your interests, it's natural and shouldn't be a
problem. If you mean that the overhead of
creating a web site to sell it is overwhelming the enjoyment of photography
itself, see last comment.
> Recently I bought a book (on trademenz) on portraits, and the seller asked if
> I was into photography. So I e-mailed him my URL by way of reply. He wrote
> back thanking me for a lot of nice images.
True, at least as far as I have the patience to tell on that pain in the ar*e
to navigate web site.
> I don't know if he was winding me up (for getting the book at a really good
> price), or what; but it did make me think again about adding a watermark
> copyright notice.
Probably not winding you up, or not too much. You have made some very nice
images. On the other hand, the web is awash
with very nice images of flowers, landscapes and so on. Are yours special
enough, monetarily valuable enough, to be
worth protecting? They are already so small on the site that I can't imagine
anyone trying to steal them. A copyright
notice large enough to read could move them further toward not worth looking at.
A true watermark across the whole image makes them not worth looking at, IMO. A
small notice in a corner can be removed
in moments by me and at least hundreds of thousands of others.
I've had at least 20 people tell me that my photo book is so good that I should
find a publisher. (Each of them would,
of course, then buy one, unless it cost too much.) Even if that's true, does it
mean I should downsize and watermark the
images from it on the web? Nah.
Tough Love Moose
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