I'm talking to myself...

... but no one's listening!

I'm working on the layout and some other aspects of the site that I think could use some improvement. I would like to make it easier to read and a little better organized.

Maybe it's the flu, but I don't like my site today. I don't like the layout, the colors, the pictures, the writing.

Nah, it's not just the flu. I've reached a point with the site now where I feel like it's time to take stock and plan some improvements. I have a reasonable amount of content online -- I have the "do it" part of the equation taken care of, now I need to refine the techniques and presentation in order to make the site more informative, more easy to navigate and easier on the eyes.

I have a reasonable amount of traffic to the site. With very little attempt at promotion, I have had more than 50,000 page views in about 10 months. I'm at around 700 page views per day, most from google. I think that with a few touch-ups, a little tasteful promotion and a continuing stream of quality content, I can probably boost those numbers pretty quickly. We shall see.

On to the criticism:

BLOG POSTS

photos: quality vs. quantity
I have been pretty liberal with some of the photos I have posted up to now, in terms of quality control. Most of the photos probably work fine as storytelling aids, but many of them are just not excellent photographs. No, very few of them are excellent photographs. That's how photography works - you take 1,000 pictures and get 10 good ones and one excellent one. Well, I'm not aiming for that level of strictness in my quality control, but I would definitely like to increase the ratio of (pictures taken / pictures posted) here. It's not hard to take a pleasing photo in Vienna, just point your camera in a random direction and release the shutter. What IS hard is to take excellent photographs - technically superb, no visible blur from camera movement, correct exposure, f-stop, white balance, framing, composition.

After almost a year and having taken 8,000 images with my Canon Digital Rebel (EOS 300D), I'm quick and confident with most of the camera's features. I think that level of confidence has led me to develop a more critical eye, and I'm torn between wanting to share lots of pictures here, even if many are mediocre, and wanting to share excellent pictures here, even if there aren't so many.

I've thought about splitting things a little - one area for "story" posts with lots of mediocre photos, and another area for photograph posts, where one or very few excellent photographs are featured in each post. I'd like to find an integrated happy medium.

 

photos: layout, image size and browsing
I am not happy with the current layout I use for photograph posts. I don't like how all of the pictures stack one on top of the other, and how the captions don't look "tight." The current dimensions I am able to safely show (500x333) are pitifully small. I'm linking to some hi-res versions now, but that's not good enough for me. I'm thinking about a hybrid that uses the blog entry as a jumping-off point for a dedicated slide show window. I would prefer to show one image at a time, with caption, at a resolution of 1000/666, or thereabouts, with small thumbnails.

Photo-browsing leaves something to be desired, as well. I'd like to have a better category system that would allow users to drill down on specific photos they'd like to see on the site. I can see from referrer logs that many people come to the site looking for photos of a certain, specific place or thing. Often, I'll have multiple photos of a specific place (i.e. the Rathaus) spread out in different posts. If a visitor looking for Rathaus photos comes to my site, I would like to make it easy for him to see all of my Rathaus photos. Maybe a DB solution or working with image metadata? (Then again, I'm not sure that I want the site to become a DB for stock images).

 

photos: copyright
Some day, somewhere, someone might like to use one of my images for commercial purposes. Of course I'd be flattered if that was the case, but, at the same time, I'd like to have a leeeetle bit of control over them. Ich weiß, das ist leichter sagt als getan.


posts: frequency / length and categories
I would like to post more, shorter entries to the blog, along with the occasional longer, focused, thematic, in-depth article / review / travel report. I would like to develop a better standardized system for creating these longer entries.

Also, the categories need some reworking. That may turn into a big job. I hope typepad has a way to "hide" categories from the indexes without actually deleting them. I don't want to destroy working URL's -- google might get angry at me.

PHOTO GALLERIES

image quality
Many of my photo gallery images are worthless. The digital copies were created at the time the film was processed, up to 5 years ago. Sometimes it looks like the developer scanned each photo into a 10x6 pixel image and blew the image up to 1000x600 pixels (not really, but close). It's painful for me to look at some of these photos, other than as fuzzy, noisy reminders of pleasant times. About the only potential solution I can see is to try to have the negatives rescanned, but that requires dough, and I'm operating in super saver modus right now. It would be great to get some higher quality digital copies of these older photos, but to paraphrase Rummy -- You post with the pictures you have, not with the pictures you wish you had.

 

organization / layout
Ugh on both counts. I like typepad, but I am not happy with the photo galleries (and have not been ever since I first set up the site). Yeah, I know - the galleries are sort of an afterthought or added bonus, but I want a USEFUL, POWERFUL added bonus, not one that frustrates me. I'd like to ditch these albums altogether and replace them with something more friendly. I'm looking around to see if I can find that more friendly something. If you've already found it, be generous and clue me in.

...that's enough for now - I may flesh it out a little more some time later... later... later... later... (echo)