Looking for feedback on my website please!

My website has been a bit of a labour of love over the last few months and I never really got round to asking everyone what they thought of it ('officially' at least!).

Original thoughts behind the website initially were to show my wildlife photography with photo galleries whilst adding a blog and trying to keep it up to date with what I'm up to, with a side effect of showing that it is possible to get results with Pentax kit!

It has been tweaked quite a lot and overall I'm happy with the way it looks at the moment but pretty sure that won't stop me tinkering with it in the future! It is based on Word Press using this theme.

Have recently added a 'showcase' section so that I can write a short story if I get something a bit special and I'm looking at adding a reviews section very soon starting with bags / tripods / heads etc.

What I would like to ask for, if you can spend the time, is to have a look through the website and give me any feedback you can, good or bad to let me know how I'm doing! If you have any questions, please do fire away or if you have any suggestions please do let me know! Is there anything you would like to see added? Are there any mistakes, spelling etc? Is there anything missing that you would like to see on a site such as this? Whatever you can think of, good or bad, would be appreciated!

The biggest question I find myself asking though is should I add any 'captive' images, i.e. shots taken in zoos, falconry centres, butterfly houses etc. Have stuck to purely wildlife at the moment but not sure if I want to add to that. Any thoughts on this point specifically would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

OK, Danny,
You wanted feedback. From the point of view of someone who used to teach HCI: there is not much wrong with it. Except ...
Change the font!
It is hard work reading that very faint typeface.
From personal testing, the most readable typeface is Tahoma from the Microsoft Easyread selection. I don't know what the Mac equivalent is.
You could try what you have - BOLD.
You could try Tahoma, standard or bold.
Your site - your final choice.

Otherwise, I liked it. Good for right and left handed users both, simple clean, everything that I tried worked as it should.
But if folk have trouble reading it, they won't stop to look at the pictures. And, the pictures have me really green-eyed. I wish I had made some of those images.
Geoff

Hi Danny

Have visited your website several times - mainly to drool over your kite shots, my only criticism is as Geoff says, the font could do with a boost to make it a little easier to read, especially since it is interesting reading. Personally I think sticking to the wildlife theme would be best, or at the very most have a 'captive shot' link to a seperate site but I must stress that it is purely personal, I can't think of a good reason for saying so . Love the site, reading the blog etc - good job, well done, keep it up!

Clare

Hi Jeff

Exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for!

Must admit that I put zero thought into the font and just went with what the theme came with as I thought it looked good. Am already looking into changing that as I agree with you, should have put more thought into it!

Question though if you don't mind:

When you say hard work reading the faint typeface, do you mean that it would be better in black as it is, better with the theme colours as they are but in Tahoma, or better with both Tahoma and black?

Main reason that I ask is that I just dived in to have a look about changing it and quickly realised that the standard theme font and colours were also used to make the logo top left and the watermark that went in the photos, to keep uniformity. If I change the font and colours it would be A LOT of work as well as learning how to change everything in the CSS style sheet!

Willing to do it if it looks right, even if it means redoing a couple of hundred photos! Maybe worth looking into a different logo at the same time if I'm going to change everything, thinking something along the lines of what Gary (cabstar) has done. Because of this, I have edited the home page and made the first few paragraphs black to see what you think / see if it helps.

Thanks Clare, good to know you visit often!

If I was to add any captive shots then they would be in a seperate menu heading of their own so instead of galleries in the top menu, there would be 'Captive' and 'Wildlife' galleries to avoid any confusion.

Think the decision is down to only really shooting wildlife this year so not many images there yet and adding the captive area would be a way of getting more images on the site sooner.

As for the Red Kites, personal favourite? Do you have them in your area? If not, more than willing to show you around if you are in my neck of the woods!

I live in a kite heavy area - lucky me! They are often over the garden and at this time of year in fairly large groups, up to 5 now and then, plus I see them on the many walks around here. So far I have only managed one or two shots I am happy with but am just as content with watching. Really it is birds of prey that intrigue me, might tootle up to Rutland to try and catch the Ospreys next year.

Clare

Oh yup - changing the font to black is already much easier to read!

Hi Danny

Agree with both the above.

I also agree with Clare - if it were me, keep it wild! If it grows slowly, so be it!

My personal favourite is your kite story - been there, panic! Wrong lens, wrong settings, wrong everything and the kite is about to sit on my head!

It was really good to read/see that even the best struggle on occasion - and very brave of you to put up the "fail" shots. It is great encouragement to us mortals, and an entertaining read - much better than the usual "I planned x,y and z and with my equipment (5 page list follows) I took this perfect shot at f stop x drone...drone!"

(unfortunately, my panics have yet to end happily!)

More of the same please!

Lloyd

The way it works, Danny, is that for easy reading, the first thing that you need is good luminance contrast. You can test this for yourself in (say) Powerpoint, by having - for example - Black text on a Light Gray background, and then reversing things so that the background is Black and the text is Light Gray. There is a long technical explanation, which I will skip.
So to answer your question - Black text for sure, Tahoma if you can.
Look at your opening page. At the paragraph that starts "It was clear ..." you switch to Light Grey. That is exactly the point at which I would predict that the average viewer will stop reading.
I guess that you could change the body text colour in the initial style sheet (or rather not have it change), and make sure that your logo and watermark stay the way that you want them.
Try for yourself - read the first few paragraphs of your home page and then switch to the blog. Now ask yourself "Who will carry on reading?"
Another reason to get this right is that you cannot control the ambient light for any viewer - and under some conditions, your pale text will be almost invisible.
Geoff

Aww, who cares about the font!

Baby kingfisher video

I actually liked it more the way it was, even with my tired, half blind old eyes. It gave the site character, it stood out from the crowd, and was actually quite restful, jmho of course

I too visit it occasionally and admire (enviously) all your photos Danny.

Thanks for the explanation Jeff, really appreciated, have worked out the black typeface across the site now and will leave it for a few days to see how I feel about it as Gwyn has hit upon, again, something I didn't really think too much about and that is that I chose that particular theme because it stood out!

Maybe I can come up with a compromise that works better all round like a darker grey to save me redoing the logo and changing over 200 photos!

Thanks also to all those who have made positive comments on the photos, really helps keep me motivated!

PS. From my stats I do know I have received 85 hits from this thread (a daily record for me, thanks!) so please don't be scared to let me know what you think!

I enjoyed it very much, clean and simple which shows your photographs off very well.

I would liked to have seen shortcuts in each gallery to the the other galleries.

Well done!

I also enjoyed it - seems nice and clear to me. Not really any critical comment from; rather made me think I ought to extracto digito and get a website sorted as well (not that I have such good wildlife piccies as these!)

Andy

A really enjoyable site. Not sure about the Kingfisher video though, with its links to youtube. After viewing it, people may click on the embedded links, thinking they are going to see another of your videos but end up leaving your site.