Opinion wanted on 2 website designs

Hi,
Ignoring the actual picture content which design do you prefer? I just want some other people's opinions.
One has plain white surround and the other coloured & patterned, which can be edited

1. http://curtziegler.com/sitedemo/powerphoto/
In this one photos can appear as actual posts, which people can comment on.

2. http://pexeto.com/dandelion_wp/
In this one photos appear in lightbox and people can't comment on individual photos, instead they comment in the gallery the photo is in.
People can comment on blog posts (which will be photoblogs in my case).
Cheers,
Pa.

I preferd the first the 2nd took a while to download the data and I hate that.
Ian

I think most people would give up on waiting for the second one.

That's an potential issue that I've asked the developer....

I gave up on the second one... too slow...

I like the first one, it had a nice feel to it...

I prefer the look of the second, but like previous comments would give up waiting for it to load.

I find the transitions on the first too harsh.

Regards - Steve

I gave up waiting for the second to load. The first feels nice.

Andrew

I had no problems loading the second one, which I actually quite like.

I prefer "dark style" on the first site, though it seems to only work if you know Latin .

Another vote for 1st proposal - for same reasons as others have noted. My broadband speed isn't special, so the long pause whilst the main image loaded was a turn off.


Steve

I prefer the layout of the second, and in particular, the option to see thumnails before selection.
As the others have said, it is a pain to load though.

1st for me, slow loading pages I just give up with.

I like number 2. It has the most modern look and seems to be the most flexible template.

Yes, it loads way too slow as it is now, but I assume it is either because it is placed on a slow server or, and this is my best guess, because of that "samples" widget - which is not supposed to be present in the final template!? So what we are seeing is some sort of development enviroment in order to test background colours etc?

2nd is way, way too slow, and I agree with Joe S the slowness seems to be at server end. That display of large image and scrollers should/can load instantly - at least the 1 I developed does As if it's trying to download all the full-sized images before displaying the first one? And it looks unfinished (Samples???), but even without that there is too much going on. Do I look at the scroller first, or the 3 pictures below it, or the four pictures in lower right?

1st is cleaner design, fast, and no JavaScript required. Menus are a bit iffy though, esp. w/o JavaScript enabled. But layout design is far better.

I've bought the 2nd theme.
In relation to the thumbnails below the first/main image- these can be removed. I'll remove them.
I'm not going to have the 'four pictures' in the lower right either- ideally the main image/scroller and an intro text below that.
I'll update when my new site is live.

The developer stated the the slowness was due to the server- if that's not the case I'll be angry.