Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

ivzhao.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 87 posts

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#31

Post by jacobolus »

ivanzhao wrote: post #30
jacobolus wrote: post #26

I don’t know if you’re looking for photographic composition advice, but generally, I’d say: (1) cut out elements extraneous to the core concept of each photograph, and as one means to that end (2) crop closer and fill up more of the frame with your subjects. My favorite shots were these: http://ivzhao.com/photography/pics/randomone15.jpg • http://ivzhao.com/photography/pics/light2.jpg • http://ivzhao.com/photography/…

Glad you like the photos. However I usually don't associate concepts with my photos and like to response to scenes instinctively without thinking too much about composition. Thanks for your advice nevertheless.

Okay, I guess I could rephrase that. Try this experiment: respond instinctively and take a picture, and then move about 30–50% closer to the subject and take another picture. It is my guess that viewers (including yourself) will like the results noticeably more. (The pictures I linked are ones that I wouldn’t necessarily benefit from the closer crop, but most of the others on your site would, IMO.) If in the experiment you don’t like the results as well as your original instincts, then, of course, trust yourself.

(For what it’s worth, the vast vast majority of my own pictures suck; it’s only through culling and cropping, and lots of practice, and hundreds of hours spent staring at prints, and then more culling and cropping, that anyone ever ends up with anything presentable.)

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#32

Post by lkozma »

ivanzhao wrote: post #15
endtime wrote: post #10

Good luck! A few bugs/suggestions: * I understand the goal of the mouseover highlight, but the light grey text is a little too light, I think. I didn't realize at first that I was supposed to mouse over, and assumed the styling was broken. * The tooltip hover thing on thumbnails has some unintuitive behavior - specifically, mousing over where the tooltip would appear causes it to appear. So if I put the mouse just ab…

Thank you for your suggestions (especially the one about Opera). I have darkened the text, now working on other issues.

Also, tiny grammar nitpick: "all the times"

I think it should be "all the time" or "at all times". I might be wrong though, English is my 4th language :)

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#33

Post by proexploit »

I like your site. I really like your decision to quit school. I quit college after a single semester to freelance and haven't looked back. I'm not saying quitting school is good for everyone; but there's some people a university education just isn't as helpful for.

Feel free to shoot me an email if you'd like to chat, take on some of my workload or anything else. Best of luck.

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#34

Post by yesno »

proexploit wrote: post #33

I like your site. I really like your decision to quit school. I quit college after a single semester to freelance and haven't looked back. I'm not saying quitting school is good for everyone; but there's some people a university education just isn't as helpful for. Feel free to shoot me an email if you'd like to chat, take on some of my workload or anything else. Best of luck.

He quits grad school (he has a degree already). Big difference.

No, I'm not trying to knock you off either.

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#35

Post by whimsy »

lkozma wrote: post #32
ivanzhao wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your suggestions (especially the one about Opera). I have darkened the text, now working on other issues.

Also, tiny grammar nitpick: "all the times" I think it should be "all the time" or "at all times". I might be wrong though, English is my 4th language :)

This is correct.

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#36

Post by adambourg »

pmichaud wrote: post #17

Ditch the "clever" text mouse over stuff. Also, you're wrecking your information hierarchy by putting your right bar vertically level with your big intro blur on the top left. Let that intro blurb sit on its own with nothing to the right of it. Good luck.

Ditto on the mouse over, it's very annoying!

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#37

Post by blhack »

ivanzhao wrote: post #15
endtime wrote: post #10

Good luck! A few bugs/suggestions: * I understand the goal of the mouseover highlight, but the light grey text is a little too light, I think. I didn't realize at first that I was supposed to mouse over, and assumed the styling was broken. * The tooltip hover thing on thumbnails has some unintuitive behavior - specifically, mousing over where the tooltip would appear causes it to appear. So if I put the mouse just ab…

Thank you for your suggestions (especially the one about Opera). I have darkened the text, now working on other issues.

Is this what it is supposed to look like? http://imgur.com/LOHRG

For somebody like me (I have pretty terrible vision), this is almost unreadable.

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#38

Post by nostromo »

ivanzhao wrote: post #15
endtime wrote: post #10

Good luck! A few bugs/suggestions: * I understand the goal of the mouseover highlight, but the light grey text is a little too light, I think. I didn't realize at first that I was supposed to mouse over, and assumed the styling was broken. * The tooltip hover thing on thumbnails has some unintuitive behavior - specifically, mousing over where the tooltip would appear causes it to appear. So if I put the mouse just ab…

Thank you for your suggestions (especially the one about Opera). I have darkened the text, now working on other issues.

You might want to darken it some more, It's quite hard to read. On a touch device, like the iPad, there is no mouse-over. Even if I touch the text, it stays light gray. My personal rule of thumb is to think twice about every onmouseover design decision because of the proliferation of touch and mobile devices.

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#39

Post by kgosser »

I was prepared to look at this thread and produce a silent laugh to myself like most over eager people this age, but I have to say that I was really impressed with your site's visuals and content. Anyone who can land you for a project or two will hopefully get an asset.

Good luck. Check me out on Twitter @kgosser or www.krisgosser.com if you need any networking help.

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#40

Post by adrianscott »

DanielN wrote: post #23
adrianscott wrote: post #14

i suggest you learn about the role of contrast in readability/usability

Not meaning to be obnoxious but do you, or anyone else, have any suggested reading material on this and similar topics as they apply to web development? Thanks.

no offense taken, thanks for asking.

i did this quick search which provided a number of resources, including a jakob nielsen (year 2000) citation, plus some more academic studies.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3...

Post reply on HN