web photo galleries

[eFestivals]

I'm currently re-working some of the stuff around the photo galleries that efestivals has, and think this would be a good opportunity to re-style how the galleries work.

So I was wondering what do you people like in a web photo gallery? Is there a particular style that you like them done in (perhaps like flickr? Or another site?).

I'd be grateful to hear your suggestions.

[SimonEvans]

Flickr would be great - especially if they are based there for bandwidth purposes, "SEO" of some description, link building etc Using Flickr is a great way to drive traffic back to the site and make the "brand" more recognised. Pinterest might be useful for the best photos or just the highlights as well

http://photos.downloadfestival.co.uk/2012/?image_keywords=Download+Highlights

http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/efmhzc/photos/p00xcm76

[eFestivals]

Of those two links, I like the style of the BBC pics, and doing something like that is no problem - it's not so far away from how they're done already.

(I think the Download one is pretty dreadful really, for a modern website).

I'd be interested to see any other suggestions people have.

[SimonEvans]

The DLF works well if you want to see large photos straight away and especially if you're using a touch screen. It's high impact.

http://www.rocksound.tv/photos although a bit annoying to navigate once in. Could do with thumbnails.

Not sure what you can grab from http://codecanyon.net or http://themeforest.net/ e.g. http://www.themepunch.com/codecanyon/megafolio/megafolio_dark.html / http://themes.themepunch.com/?theme=megafoliopro_jq / http://codecanyon.net/item/jquery-facebook-gallery/full_screen_preview/3879813

Edited June 18, 2013 by SimonEvans

[eFestivals]

http://www.rocksound.tv/photos although a bit annoying to navigate once in. Could do with thumbnails.

In functionality, what efests has already for its galleries is at least as good as what Rocksound have.

http://www.efestivals.co.uk/photos/photos.php

The major problem with what I have at the mo is that everything from a single festival is contained within the same gallery - which means they sometimes have over 1,000 pics, which is a silly amount to expect anyone to view them all (meaning the last pics in the gallery are unlikely to be viewed).

It would be very easy for me to break things down into sub-galleries in the way that the BBC have done it in the link you gave above, and give a listing of those sub-galleries at the bottom of the page - so that's definitely my preference at the mo, as it's the most navigable style you've presented me so far I reckon.

[eFestivals]

ps ... I won't be wanting anything for wordpress ... efests runs on a bespoke content manager.

[ethereal]

Higher resolution would be the biggest improvement, or at least an option for that. 500px or 460px is great for mobile devices though (or masking sub-par pics. on occasions!)

[SimonEvans]

Yes, higher resolution definitely and with SEO in the background so you'd have something like "Artist at Event" or "Artist at Event Photos"

[eFestivals]

higher res is definitely something on the cards, but of course that can't be post-applied to the photos already online.

[ethereal]

The new photo sequences are good I think, though I'd maybe break up each block of bands with a couple of the site to keep the visual interest/variety flowing. Each photo should as different as possible to the next, less is more etc. Would be a good feature to allow people to embed on their own blogs perhaps, with logo/link

[eFestivals]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/efmhzc/photos/p00xcm76

I've now changed the efests galleries to work in a similar way to how this BBC photos page does, where you're able to select a particular set of photos to view from a list of the galleries within that album.

http://www.efestivals.co.uk/festivals/iow/2013/galleries.shtml

I've not spent too much time on making it too pretty, because things will change again within the next week or three so that higher-res pics can be viewed.

[t8yman]

might be too late with this, but I love the way tapiture works. never really used it before today, and its damn impressive

http://tapiture.com/

[eFestivals]

the new higher-res galleries are now in place - tho of course that's only applicable for the most recent photo galleries, where we've got a higher-res photo in place to work from. Hopefully they'll be higher-res galleries for all festivals from now on.

An example of the new hi-res galleries is here:-

http://www.efestivals.co.uk/festivals/glastonbury/2013/galleries.shtml

Thanks for you input with ideas for how to do the new galleries.

[eFestivals]

oh, BTW ... currently the hi-res galleries only display to desktop computer users, but this will be changed very shortly to apply to any user of the full skin. Mobile users will continue to get the smaller sized galleries, for speed of download and lower data-transfer.