However, someone had mentioned once that this is a photography website, so perhaps the lede background image should be some nice images instead…
Fun aside - that current background image was one I threw together in Blender fairly quickly back when I was playing around with ideas - they’re supposed to be 3D representation of pixels, and were going to probably be used as part of a video introduction sequence for branding.
So, I was thinking about possibly modifying the front page to use images as backgrounds instead:
I can also make that lede section work as a sort of full-page splash screen by making the element fill the viewport. I sort of like the idea of visually showcasing an image as part of the overall image as a photography-centric website:
So, any thoughts? Ideally I’d like to be able to pull from all the members photos that they are willing to share with us (and I’ll put in proper attribution of course).
Some questions, then:
Yay or Nay on images in lede background?
Keep current lede height, or use the splash screen approach where it fills the viewport (the more I look at it, the more I am personally leaning in this direction - big-ass gorgeous photos from you guys should be the first thing folks get to see when they come here).
(Now I get to try out the poll plugin for the forum - nice coincidence!)
Use images as background?
Yes, use an image for lede background!
No, keep the awesome image as-is.
0voters
Big splash lede or not?
Yes, use a full-size lede image (fill viewport)
No, keep the current lede height (or something that doesn’t fill the screen).
So I thought it might help to have actual working pages to illustrate the examples I showed above as screenshots, so here we go (borrowing an image from @LightSweep temporarily to illustrate - I wouldn’t put the pages up without proper attribution - hope Ian doesn’t mind me using the image as an example real quick!).
My main question is: which image better represents a photography site? And my personal answer is: none (and use an abstract image like the one you already have) or many. Wouldn’t it be cool if all of us would contribute few images to be randomly displayed every ten seconds or so? Then the lede image would really represent the community!
Of course, all images must be entirely produced with open source tools
I should have mentioned this in my initial post, but yes - my intention was to have possibly rotating images from the community, not a single static image. (Or a new image every week/days etc). Absolutely something to showcase the communities work.
I’ve actually got some thoughts about ways to showcase/network community photographers, but I’ll address it in another thread for visibility…
Ok, so I think the poll shows pretty clearly what some of you think.
I’ll start thinking about the best way for us to share the images that we’d like to contribute to a rotating background, and I’ll style it to fit in the current space.
I’d also like to consider starting a section of the website proper for showcasing works, but will create a new topic soon for us to all talk about the best way to approach it.
Just a note: on my 4k monitor, the boxes make up a thin stripe across the top and I can see down to half of the second row of recent articles. The boxes are kinda soft from being blown up to 3800 pixels wide; could you use SVG perhaps?
