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Re: [OM] photo gallery software

Subject: Re: [OM] photo gallery software
From: Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2010 10:14:18 -0600
>> 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.
>
> Because when they are big enough to enjoy, they are big enough to be
> worth copying and re-using without paying. Many sites use this technique.

Agreed. It's an issue with screen-savers, specifically.

During 2011, I will be implementing a feature on Zone-10 where I
literally give away a photo a month which is sized for screen savers
or backgrounds. The main page will show the image in the standard
web-page size, but when you click on it, you can get a large one in
several sizes to match your screen resolution.


>> 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.

The Zone-10 website standard is 800 pixel width for image area with a
20-pixel white border. This works with the overall page design to work
will in almost any computer screen or browser. What is very
disconcerting, however, is the shrinking height of our computer
screens. It used to be that 1024x768 was the standard, then 1280x1024.
But now with the letterbox-format screens you are lucky to get 720
pixel height! Sometimes more, sometimes less. This makes it much more
difficult to display vertical-oriented images on the webpage because
you have to make the long-side not 800 pixels, but no more than 700
pixels. This really bothers me because I have some pictures I'd like
to display on Zone-10 that I literally cannot because if I shrink them
enough to fit on the computer screen, the image is too small.


>> 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.

It took me about three months to get Zone-10 off the ground. During
that time I had launched the site with three major applications:
Gallery, Website, Forum. All three used off-the-shelf open-source
applications. The forum was shuttered from a lack of interest once
Moose Monday went away, and the gallery has been very useful for me
personally in the selling of photographs from event shoots. So, in
essence, the gallery became personal business, the forum died and the
website itself hasn't seen really any significant changes under the
hood for quite some time--except for the odd plugin that improves
tracking. All I have to do is add articles. And with the business of
my day job, those don't come nearly often enough. Yet, we average
several thousand visitors a week. My biggest concern will be the
migration of content over to the new CMS. That'll get ugly.

But back to image dimensions for a moment, there is a careful balance
between image dimensions and usability. Even with the faster DSL
speeds people have at their homes, you need to average 100-150k file
size per image. People won't wait around for 300k files to
download--especially when you have several on a page. When processing
images for Zone-10 website, I have to run that ragged edge of file
quality vs file size. Sometimes an image just won't work and I've had
to avoid displaying some because the amount of detail even in a
800x600 image with 85% quality will still exceed 300k.

The next CMS will allow me to setup shared sites on the same engine.
As I maintain several sites, this will give me not only a single
server, but a single environment to maintain. Only one installation of
software to update.

AG
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