[nathanm]

I heard from some guy on the street that this is a real cool photo site.  I don't know who it was, he looked kind of shady.  But he was right about the site, it is incredibly cool.  Well, sorta.  I mean, I'm no expert on these things but I thought it was okay.  Boy howdy, that "fine art prints" link sure looks interesting.  I bet folks could borrow their wife's credit card and click the shit out of that thing.  The shady guy said the site's web developer wouldn't know the difference between green peas and PHP, but somehow forged ahead.  Personally I think it's foolish to unleash uneducated people upon precious HTML code, but to each his own.  In any case, it sure looks like any clueless dope can get a domain these days.  All the filters and barriers are knocked down.  The inmates are running the asylum.  Well, whaddaya gonna do?  Progress marches on…

[giantsteps]

 Well ....I'm one more idiot on the loose (not lose). I"m forwarding this site to family and friends.

 Nice work.


 Frank

[mcullinan]

Great stuff. I like your artwork the best, especially the later stuff?? (If it goes from later to earlier in order)
Mike

[nathanm]

The artwork gallery is hand-sorted by style, the b&w roughly sorted by date and the color is alphabetic by title.

[bz79]

Well I don't know who the guy is that you're talking about, but it looks like he stole all your photo's.  I'd file suit... 

Nice looking site, and even better looking photo's! 

[ted_b]

Nathan, very nice site....and incredible photos.  I've seen some of these here, but the collections show what great stuff you have.  Niiiice!  My personal faves are Cold Sunrise (would love that as pc desktop) and Twilight Sewage.

What is the largest a print like Cold Sunrise would enlarge to, and still keep the incredible saturation, etc?  PM me, if appropriate, with $$ (I know the site shows 24" x 30").   

Ted

[nathanm]

Yes, the sizes are not exact given the differing aspect ratios of each image. I grouped them into Small Medium and Large to make things simpler.  The largest dimension I can print is 23.75".  Nothing will be any wider than that.  Longer, but not wider.  The largest digital shots I have printed are the giant panoramas like "Vivid Sunrise I" and "Snowy Heartland" (Vinyl album cover shown for scale) which are each 11.5 x 54"  (These could only be plaque mounted actually, as I can't cut 60" matboard currently, only 40")



The largest 4x5 I've printed is this one of 'Rock Garden" which is 23.5 x 48".  It has an incredible amount of detail and sharpness.  One of my personal faves.



"Twilight Sewage" would make for a 23 x 43" print if maxed out.  I would opt for a Medium on that one myself.  The color digitals will by nature look a bit softer and grainier when enlarged. But of course it depends on personal subjectivity, viewing distance and whatnot.

[lonewolfny42]

I see you still have that green shag rug....



Your site looks very good nathan....best of luck !!!

[nathanm]

Let me ask ya'll a serious ecommerce question.  I am trying to decide if I want to get a merchant account or not.  It will cost me at least 20 bucks a month to accept credit cards.  Currently it is PayPal-only, but I wonder if this is a hindrance?  Would you personally be turned away from a site that didn't accept credit cards?  I don't mean my site, but any site at all.  PayPal takes a bigger taste of each sale than the merchant account, but then again that is only WHEN you use it whereas the merchant account will cost me consistently. Given an estimated 0-2 sales per year it would seem to make sense to stick with occasional-fee PayPal rather than monthly-fee MA, but I can't help but wonder if a PayPal-only situation might turn people away?  I don't know how prevalent PayPal is.  Of course, this all leaves aside the real elephant in the room: absolutely no naked girls, kittens or cute babies to be found anywhere! DOH!!!

[mjosef]

Yes to Paypal...for the small guy its the only game in town, unfortunately.
I often use PayPal to pay even though I can use a credit card....this is for small purchases, under 500$.

[ooheadsoo]

In my experience, paypal works fine for small online vendors.  Some may even prefer to go through paypal rather than giving you their credit card information directly.

[JohnR]

I'm not sure I understand - can't you accept credit card payments thru Paypal? (It was that way a little while back)

Anyway, awesome site. Just a couple of thoughts... one is that the image title is quite a long way from the image. Another is that it would be helpful if you could see that you were on (say) "page 2 of 3" of images. And, if you are selling prints, where is the link when I am looking at the image to where I can buy it (or at least, think about it)?

When I am in B&W and get to the end, there is no link to take me back to the top or to the next gallery.

There's a link near the image that downloads simpleviewer. Is there a way to remove that - even I got confused by that...

Hmmmm... OK, I finally clicked on the "Fine Art Prints" link. It almost feels like this should be the home page.

There are links there to register - why do I need to register? Can't I just buy it?

[ted_b]

I personally certainly prefer Paypal for smaller purchases for the reasons stated, especially the longer online form to fill out.  However, at $175+ some folks would want credit card for bonus point or payback reasons, or simply that they don't use paypal.

[nathanm]

I'm not sure I understand - can't you accept credit card payments thru Paypal? (It was that way a little while back)

You can, but it would be another step for anyone who doesn't have PayPal.  I would guess that many people would just want to use their card directly.

Anyway, awesome site. Just a couple of thoughts... one is that the image title is quite a long way from the image. Another is that it would be helpful if you could see that you were on (say) "page 2 of 3" of images. And, if you are selling prints, where is the link when I am looking at the image to where I can buy it (or at least, think about it)?

When I am in B&W and get to the end, there is no link to take me back to the top or to the next gallery.

There's a link near the image that downloads simpleviewer. Is there a way to remove that - even I got confused by that...

All valid points, but this is what happens when you don't know how to use Flash.  I think I can add HTML on the top and bottom (I did bodge in a menu on one of the galleries) but as far as customizing the Simple Viewer thing I am at a loss.  Simple Viewer is the name of the software, it is a Flash plugin that comes with Lightroom and I was glad because it was a pre-built template that didn't suck.  It errs on the side of simplicity rather than customization which is good for me.  I downloaded the Adobe Flash demo app, but it's pretty daunting.  I will see what I can do.  You have to use the Back button to return to the main page.  I agree, this sucks.

Hmmmm... OK, I finally clicked on the "Fine Art Prints" link. It almost feels like this should be the home page.

Well, I want to show off the images before selling them, and the cart site is more utilitarian and the images are small and ugly.  I know, I would love to have the Flash gallery integrated with the cart system, but it's beyond my capabilities.  The Simple Viewer does a great job of presentation (and it scales based on window size too, which I dig.) but if there were an "order print" link that'd be the cat's ass.

There are links there to register - why do I need to register? Can't I just buy it?

I can't remove those menu items, they are a required part of the shopping cart software.  Again, I am stuck with that because I don't know what I'm doing with the internal Linuxy stuff.  I downloaded an open source shopping cart called ZenCart and my head just about exploded reading the instructions.  MySQL database, CURL, PHP…

It's clear that I need a true web master person to fix the gubbins going on behind the scenes, but it's a question of how much more money do I want to spend above and beyond the costs of the printing.  What you see is what I was able to cobble together given my limited knowledge and time.  It's a lame excuse, but the only one I've got!

[nathanm]

I've built my handy dandy canvas stretcher tool (quite a project unto itself) and have been busy mounting my canvas prints.  They turned out really great, I think.  But then I'm biased.   It definitely lends a more objets d'art quality to the image, having the wraparound edge and all.  Still have more to go, but the clamps really make it a lot easier to do doing it manually.  Tight as a drum, too!

[bpape]

Nathan

You can set up a cart program to let your customers use their credit cards online whether they have a paypal acct or not.  You can still use paypal as your cc processor.   It costs $30 per month for 'virtual terminal' to process credit cards.

Bryan

[nathanm]

Interesting, I'll look into it.  Although finding a customer would be a good first step…