My new Website!

[Eric.]

Please check out my work.

Any comments/crit on my website appreciated.
www.ericmackay.com

[TPF Sponsor]

[jeroen]

I will type while I browse your site and give you an honest answer

1. Jesus WTF! I really, really hate that when someone thinks he must give my browser's screen a kick in the balls and push their site all over my monitor.
This definitely does not say "welcome"...
2. Ah, you kept it simple. Bless you for that. And a little different typeface to make it a bit more personal. Nice
3. Your about page. Not very much info there. In what country is Edmonton BA? Did you have any photo education? How old are you? That skateboard says very very young to me because I cannot see your face... I cannot copy that text since it's an image
4. Contact. Ehm, it's nice that you give me a form. But I always like to keep a copy when I send bussiness e-mail. So I will probably not use this but make something up myself from your URL
5. Okay, the photos... to industrial we go. Your buttons are a bit small. I'm glad I have a tablet and don't have to navigate on a laptop. It looks pretty though, because it does not distract from the photos
6. Nice shots here, some series aswell
7. Personal. What's personal about this? Wow! These are pretty cool photos. I like these, they're better then the ones under industrial IMO

Anyway, I hope this will help you.
It's a very nice looking site, but with a few changes it can become great

Cheers Jeroen

[flyingseale]

Sorry Eric, but it doesn't work for me on the following points.
1. Slow
2. Hyperlinks are off the bottom of my page with a resolution of 1024 x 768
3. Numbered buttons and other buttons below images in personal did not work or took so long that I gave up.
4. Due to #3 I did not bother looking any more.

As such, you might have a great site, but I'll never know...and I'm sure I'm not the only one who will browse away from your site due to the above issues.

Mike

[DigitalDiva]

I'm looking at it on 1280 x 1024 and it looks good to me.

Comments:

The contact form is fine with me, and I realize what it means to keep your email OFF of the site you create to prevent an avalanche of SPAM. But what confuses me is the 'flavour of the week'. What does that mean?

On your about page..no comment needed between the words trades and has.

I also don't feel that the image used on your about page is strong enough to blend in with your other images.

Plus side:

It's clean, simple and the photography of most images is very strong. Your portrait #1 in the Personal area is superb.

[stellar_gal]

DIVA- please elaborate on the email on the website. I'm creating one and don't want all the spam either. I havn't thought that far ahead I guess. I have a mac.com site and email if it matters.

[Moonfruit]

Its a great looking site, simple and functional.

I dont like the forced slide shows though, and for sure those on slower connections wont either.

Image wise, you have excellent images in your Personal section, whereas some quite weak images in the industrial section.

[Eric.]

Jeroen
Thanks for the constructive comments. I guess I'll respond with my intentions regarding these.
1) The reason I chose to have my website take over the screen is to quite simply get rid of the possibilities of having to scroll if the person is viewing at the proper resolution (I built this around 1024x768, I noticed that flyingseale had problems with that so I can only assume his broswer has a few extra toolbars or something which push the site down)
3) My about page is the way is simple for a reason, (I havn't had time to sit down and write a super dee dooper bio yet) Thank you for the comments I'll take those in consideration. In regards to Edmonton, the market in which I'm going to be doing my promotions in will know where exactly that is, but I really could list the province it's in at least.
4) The form sends you a response email from my email to the email you have listed. Thanks for the comment on sending a copy of the written part. I'll look into including that in the response email. I set the form because a) decreases spam b) When I go to a website I personally hate it when it opens up the mail program and slows things down. I usually won't bother to send a person an email if I have to go to a seperate program to do so.
5) The buttons I made small for a reason. I didn't want them to distract from my photos. This is meant to be viewed as a slideshow these are merely an option for the person to skip if they so choose. Clean and simple was my goal, big buttons looked cheesy and dumb.
7) Thanks for the comments on my images! I entitled this section as 'Personal' because this is work I have shot for myself. Personal projects. The industrial is what I'm trying to build my portfolio in and pursue.

Thank you very much for your comments and crits. I'll talk it over with my teacher this week.

flyingseale, thansk for the try, I'll look into those issues this week. I'm not sure I'm willing to reduce image quality for speed though. On most of the connections I've tested this out on it's seemed to be of an acceptable speed. Also the site was built around 1024x768, so I'm guessing your browser has some toolbars that push the site down.

Digital Diva,Thank you very much also, I appreciate the grammar check! I just threw that together quickly the other night at 2 in the morning so I wasn't at my best
Flavour of the week was meant to be cheeky. It's in there as a way to show a little bit of my personality in a site I tried to make as proffesional as possible. My mother didn't understand it.
I realize the skateboard image may not seem prevalent to my other works, but I'm essentially using it for the same reason I used the "flavour if the week" feild in my form, to define me and my interests. I'll be on the lookout for a better photo though.

Thanks for the comments on my work to! I really appreciate the kind words.

stellar_gal
If you want to reduce spam but still post your email, make your email address an image, that way it can be posted but email spiders(progams that search the internet for email addresses to spam) won't pick up on it because it's not text. Alternatively, you can use yourname (at) mac dot com. (type out the words at and dot) can achieve this also.

thanks moonfruit. I'm curious though as to why you think my industrial stuff is weak. I've had it critiqued by both working profesionals, prospective clients, and lastly my teacher who has an MFA. I've never heard it described as weak. I'm interested in hearing if you'd care to elaborate.

Thanks everyone. I'll work on some of those things!

[tranceplant]

the site is simple and clean.. I like that. The pictures are nice as well wich is the more important at this point. It just needs a little thing more to make it really professional.