New online Travel Photography Magazine

[dhansak]

I have recently launched a new website which I intend to become a high quality resource for all people interested in Travel Photography.

Over the coming weeks, months and years I plan to add content geared specifically towards the Travel Photographer inlcuding Destination Guides, Technique articles and Equipment reviews.

The first couple of articles have been posted with another very interesting one about Varanasi in India. This article will hopefully be uploaded this evening or some time over the weekend, I assure you that you will fine the story very intersting.

I would welcome any comments or feedback on the site and it's content as it stands.

Thanks for looking

Daniel Webb
www.TravelPhotoMag.com

[huwevans]

I enjoyed my cursory 'first look'. Obviously there's not much content to comment on yet, but I'll definitely check back for that article on India - a place I've long wanted to visit for photography.

[Zou]

Looks good, I'm keen to see more.

[dhansak]

New article on Varanasi, India is now online. Aren't Steve's photographs fantastic?

http://www.travelphotomag.com/destin...asi_india.html

[huwevans]

The file size is way too high, IMO, making for an unnecessarily large download. It would definitely put me off browsing further. Other than that, yes, they're okay, but I wouldn't have said 'fantastic'.

[dhansak]

I find that the page is loading pretty quickly, even on my mobile phone. I'll see what I can do to reduce them but there is a trade off between maintaining the quality and reducing the file size. Do you think that the images are too large in terms of pixel size for normal viewing or that I should compress them further?

Thanks for your feedback on Steve's images too. I'll pass a link to the thread on to him.

Daniel

[Fen]

I'll see what I can do to reduce them but there is a trade off between maintaining the quality and reducing the file size.

With careful handling you can get files of those dimensions down to 150k easily without any loss of quality.

[pachinkofan]

Yeah I mean half a meg for the pic of the Indian? :|
Still, cutting down on bandwidth usage here, so maybe I'm just being sensitive, but I agree, they're too large for me to be a regular visitor.

G>

[dhansak]

Okay, leave it with me. I'll see if I can sort this out - I hadn't noticed that these files were large so thanks for pointing this out.

[pachinkofan]

I normally just follow a file size closeish to the forum's rules. Makes it easier for visitors.

Then again I use thumbnails first so people can decide what they fancy looking at.

G>

[dhansak]

Job done, that any better?

[Benchista]

Much, yes. It zips open now.

It's a nice set of Varanesi, but (being a jaded old cynic) it's more or less exactly what I expected to see. Not really a criticism, I'm not sure it's possible to get anything truly original there, and it's always interesting.

[dhansak]

Thanks for help and comments so far. I posted up a guide on Barcelona, it was only when I started writing it down that I realised just how much there was to talk about!

None of the images on the site are any larger than 100k now.

Regards

Daniel

[huwevans]

None of the images on the site are any larger than 100k now.

Much better! Even in these days of lots of people having broadband you've got to remember that a few pictures on a page can still leave it taking an age to load. And then there are bandwidth limits - some people have packages that incur extra costs if they go over, say, a couple of GB/month. And one more thing - local cacheing speeds up the whole internet browsing experience for the end-user, and large single items like image files inevitably fill up the cache sooner, leading to a more frequent turn-over and slowing the whole process on other sites that might be frequently visited.

So really it's still sensible practice and politeness to your intended audience to keep files sizes no higher than the really need to be. In general, I found your site pretty good in that sense - it was only the image files sizes that were a bit of a problem.

[huwevans]

Incidentally, here's a lesson for anyone else dealing with these issues. Because I still had the old version of the pictures from Varenesi in my cache I decided to make a direct comparison with the new down-sized version of one of them. The old one was 388kB, and the new on 104kB, but even examining them at ludicrous magnifications in Photoshop I cannot see any significant difference in the image quality. That's essentially why we keep the limit on these forums at 100kB, despite the occasional protestations from some - most iamges will compress a long way before deterioration becomes noticeable.

[dhansak]

I used Photoshop's 'Save for Web and Devices' option to reduce the file sizes if this helps anyone else having similar issues.

Thanks again everyone for your help and please come back to the site soon. I have a cracking article on Dubai coming soon from a published professional which I think will be of interest.

[miked]

Excellent now, and I see you have a gallery of Dimitri's photographs. He's often posted on this forum - he's a class act, that's for sure.

[dhansak]

Glad you liked it.

I have an article coming from a Rastafarian who worked at a couple of major record companies including Polydor.

He is sending me an article on Jamaica which should be very interesting.

He photographed Bob Marley in the 70s amongst other very famous artists and his work is really excellent.

I'm meeting him on Sunday to talk further.

Also another guide for the Maldives coming this weekend.

Feedback from viewers has been great so far with a really good number of hits. The North Face are also sending me some new products to review and I am planning my first competition right now.

Thanks for looking

Daniel Webb
Editor
www.TravelPhotoMag.com

[Done_rundleCams]

Excellent now, and I see you have a gallery of Dimitri's photographs. He's often posted on this forum - he's a class act, that's for sure.

Hi Daniel,

I have to agree that Dimitri's pics, IMVHO, have the most impact and I found the
photos in Varanasi, while being interesting subjects, definitely lacked the impact
Dimitri's which, again IMVHO, maybe due to the fact that they are shot/cropped
to loose.

Cheers and looking forward to seeing more pics

Jack