How to best organize a gallery ?

[Philippe Tarbouriech]

After filling up more than 200MB of HTML gallery on my website, I decided GoLive was taking too long each time, so I just set up a new site http://www.phitar.net/gallery using menalto's gallery, an excellent tool but once again I am facing the eternal organization question:

What do you find are the best way of organizing an online galley ?
What's most compelling ?

It does depend on shooting style, but maybe I am too generous and shoot too much, but...

Chronological: makes finding the new stuff easiest on repeat visits
Topics: Portraits, Landscapes...
Series: Blue, Soft...
Location:

Any suggestions ? Point of vue ?

--
philippe
http://www.phitar.com

 

[Mark_A]

After filling up more than 200MB of HTML gallery on my website,

200mb is a heck of a lot ... I have 40mb and thats 600 pictures !! how many do you have?

What do you find are the best way of organizing an online galley ?
What's most compelling ?

What is your objective for your web site?
It is really as simple as that I think...

If you want to win customers then loose the politics imho, your politics should have little to do with whether you can do a job for someone imo .

It does depend on shooting style, but maybe I am too generous and
shoot too much, but...
Any suggestions ? Point of vue ?

Yes .. what is your objective with your website ... ??

Answer that - and then proceed as if you were excluding distractios from a photograph with a single point of focus ... and all the other questions will also answer themselves for you .. (I think that is !!

Interested in your response to this ..

--
Mark

 

[Mark_A]

After filling up more than 200MB of HTML gallery on my website,

200mb is a heck of a lot ... I have 40mb and thats 600 pictures !!
how many do you have?

BTW Ive no time to look more closely at this moment but it looks to me like you have some excellent pictures there perhaps that explains why you want to keep so many online

--
Mark

 

[Philippe Tarbouriech]

After filling up more than 200MB of HTML gallery on my website,

200mb is a heck of a lot ... I have 40mb and thats 600 pictures !!
how many do you have?

I don't really know. maybe 1500 ?

What do you find are the best way of organizing an online galley ?
What's most compelling ?

What is your objective for your web site?
It is really as simple as that I think...

Good question. For me the answer is not that simple, there are many answers. I feel like I am learning a lot from people's feedback and am really curious when the tell me what they like.

I was also trying to ask a more open question, not just for myself. Wondering what people think when they make decisions as to how to organize their galleries.

If you want to win customers then loose the politics imho, your
politics should have little to do with whether you can do a job for
someone imo .

True, I agree with you, but to be honest, I am not really hoping the website will bring me customers.

It does depend on shooting style, but maybe I am too generous and
shoot too much, but...
Any suggestions ? Point of vue ?

Yes .. what is your objective with your website ... ??
Answer that - and then proceed as if you were excluding distractios
from a photograph with a single point of focus ... and all the
other questions will also answer themselves for you .. (I think
that is !!

Interested in your response to this ..

I very much agree with your suggestions. Maybe my problem is that I do not have this focus you describe and am still looking, searching for that focus. I feel like I am more interested in the exploration than focusing on something.

What is your focus ?

--
Mark

--
philippe
http://www.phitar.com

 

[Philippe Tarbouriech]

Thank you for your kind comment.

I visited your site at length, and had a great time wandering. Excellent work ! but I am not sure I get what your explicit focus is. I see a lot of attention to composition, to light, to animals (and their families).

How did you decide on what galleries to create ? Do you add much after you create one ? Do you shoot with intent to publish in a certain gallery or do you find connexions after ? Is there sort of a hierachy of topics ?

Many questions

p

After filling up more than 200MB of HTML gallery on my website,

200mb is a heck of a lot ... I have 40mb and thats 600 pictures !!
how many do you have?

BTW Ive no time to look more closely at this moment but it looks to
me like you have some excellent pictures there perhaps that
explains why you want to keep so many online

--
Mark

--
philippe
http://www.phitar.com

 

[Don Ellis]

What do you find are the best way of organizing
an online galley ?

I go for topics: places, faces, infrared, whatever -- unless a particular topic becomes too large. For example, if "places" had 200 photos and there were 40 from each of 4 cities, plus another 40 from everywhere else, I would set up five galleries -- four for individual cities and one for general (miscellaneous).

Chronological: makes finding the new stuff
easiest on repeat visits

Hate chronological, prefer boxes. It's the way people think (and I don't want to hear about outside the box

Most of your viewers will be one- or two-time visitors, I imagine; not people who return again and again. Chronological only appeals to regular returnees and new visitors (at least me) will be put off by the lack of organization, especially with a large number of photos.

Topics: Portraits, Landscapes...

Sounds good (see above).

Series: Blue, Soft...

Also fine... you can mix with topics. I have two general galleries -- places and stockpile. Whenever a particular kind of photo appears in quantity (10 or 15), I will consider setting up a dedicated gallery for that subject.

Location:

See above.

Good luck.

Don

http://www.kleptography.com if you'd care to see what I do.

 

[Philippe Tarbouriech]

Thanks Don,

You make a good point about chronological being less appropriate, because in particularr there are fewer repeat visitors. I guess a log of some sort will replace favorably a chronological general presentation. I really like your sorting style, both the humor and the variety which you blend together with an elegant presentation.

Nice rich red background is quite unusual but works beautifully !

p

 

[Don Ellis]

Thanks Don,

Hi Philippe... you're welcome.

You make a good point about chronological being
less appropriate, because in particularr there
are fewer repeat visitors. I guess a log of some
sort will replace favorably a chronological
general presentation.

Sounds good to me... I'll come visit

I really like your sorting style, both the humor
and the variety which you blend together with an
elegant presentation.

Thank you. Although we have the cliche that a picture should speak for itself, I think that's mainly true of great pictures. Most photographs are helped by a few words to set the stage, establish the mood, explain the circumstances, whatever. But everyone will have their own thoughts on presentation.

Nice rich red background is quite unusual but
works beautifully !

A medium-dark gray (grey) is really a wonderful color to display photographs against, but a few too many websites use it so I went looking for another color. Black was out for a few reasons -- too many people use it, photographs with a lot of black bleeding off the edge don't stand out well without a frame, and it's a bit stark for my tastes. I was looking for something warmer.

Thanks for taking the time to look.

Best of luck.

Don