New web site : Comments and critiques welcome

[Mike Milicia]

Thanks to the excellent services of GalleryCraft Web Design (owned and operated by Florida nature photographer Jason Hahn),
I finally have a photography web site up and running :

http://www.miliciaphoto.com (http://www.miliciaphoto.com/)

Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated !

[Don Thompson]

I liked your site. Easy to navigate, and while I didn't have time to look at all of the photos, the thumbnails all looked good. I have bookmarked your page and plan to return to look it over more thoroughly later.

[Stefan Minnig]

Michael,

You have some phenomenal bird photos on your site. I was very impressed. The site looks nice and clean as well. The black background is very helpful in viewing the images.

Suggestions are as follows:

The "Featured Portfolio" page is within the "Galleries" page, but has its own link as well. It seems a little awkward to me. I would probably delete it out of the "Galleries" page itself, and then just move the "Featured Portfolio" link in the menu bar next to the "Galleries" link (Ex. Home, Galleries, Featured Portfolio, etc.). That will tie the links loosely together for the viewer just by being next to each other in the menu bar. Just a FYI. Since we read left to right, place the most important link that you'd want a viewer to see on the left side of the menu bar (always keeping the home page listed first that is) and then list each subsequent link in a nice flowing order to the right.

Another little picky point (just from a designers harsh eye), I would probably center align "Galleries" (circled yellow; the "G" is tight against the gray box anyways). It could be centered where the "Featured Portfolio" text is (circled in pink). This case of the left aligned "Galleries" text is found in both the "Galleries" page and the "Featured Portfolio" page.

In the "Featured Portfolio" page, I would delete the "Galleries" bar and the info below it (Home>Featured Portfolio>Featured Portfolio). It's not needed. Move the "Search Photos" from the non-needed "Galleries" bar to the "Featured Portfolio" gray bar if needed in this section.

The blue lines in this file are just to represent some alignment. The image I posted shows one gray bar longer than the other, thus creating less visual alignment on the left or right sides. The "Home>Featured Portfolio>Featured Portfolio" information is way to the left. If you are keeping any of this information in, it would be nice from a visual standpoint to have it aligned.

I'm not sure if the little blue outline around the gray "Search Photos" box can be removed. If it can, I would. It draws my eye just a little. Again, just a harsh designers eye.

I understand that some web programming of my suggestions may not be feasible or worth the effort. I'm just looking at it from a designer's view. Just a FYI if you didn't know. Your website may look different on different browsers. When testing your site, make sure you test it on a variety of browsers (Ex. Safari, Firefox, IE).

Hope this was a little helpful.

Stefan