Wow was I neurotic this morning or what! This was the first time ever, through poetry, music, painting, and photography, that I put myself on the line. I was devestated by the first few responses because they weren't clear enough, at the time, for me to discern whether the site was the problem, the scans, or the images themselves. Of course, I assumed it was the images...and thought about jumping off a bridge...But now I'm back to Earth (got there by walking, too...).(posted 8829 days ago)The information I have been getting has been extremely helpful. I think what I'm going to do is start a new site from scratch, listening to everything which has been said. I do have a few questions:
1) If anyone goes to the People Photography Introduction/Welcome page, you'll notice it doesn't have all the advertising crap from my server supplier. I think I can clean a new site up a lot if I import all my pages which have been previously created through Composer, PS5, and, if I can find a download of it, Claris Homepage. One of the reasons the site was so bare, was because I was using the supplier's software for everything, and trying to do this with little experience on bare-minimal software, not to mention all the uploading time and crashes I was going through, left me saying absolutely "no" to anything spectacular. I'm going to create the pages and import them like I did with the Forum Welcome, which will give me all the time I need, and all the resources, to do it right. I have plenty of experience with PS5, so I know I can get something 'graphically' pleasing if I work hard...
2) what should a page size be, W and H? I use an 800x600 monitor, but most people use something larger I think, and I'd rather have the pages fit well on the majority of screens...
3) how should I create my images? They are scann very large at 150dpi as jpegs on cd; should I reduce to 72dpi Jpegs, and with what compression (I was using 10-maximum quality, and 3 progressive scans...).
4) should I offer thumbnails and 'larger' images which fit onto the screen, or that plus a third, quite large image if one clicks on the 'larger' image?
5) how do I present the professional/business aspect? a dedicated "contact" page with a link to it on every page?
I don't know what else to ask, I don't even know the grammar yet, let alone the syntax of all this...
I know some of this is a personal decision, so I guess I'm asking from a business/managerial PoV...i.e., you're the boss since you're the potential client...
Thanks everyone
sincerely again, shawn