This is a young Western King bird that I found one day on the ground in the evening hours. I thought it just couldn’t figure out how to fly yet and had fallen out of the nest. The nest was atop a high tree so there was no way to put it back. Our cats and peacocks were ready to eat it right there so I took it in for the night hoping to release it in the morning where I knew it’s parents were. Unfortunately it was then I I found out upon closer inspection that he was missing all of one wing and would never ever have a chance of getting off the ground. I didn’t appear to be a fresh wound since it was otherwise healthy. It was then I found out I had a little king in my life!
Little King now had a king sized mansion with all perches and branches at various angles so he can hop from branch to branch. Here he is sitting on his perch in my studio. Some are shot against a white background with just window lighting and a reflector and others are shot with a shoot through umbrella and an SB600 opposite the window. The images with trees in the background were seen through a side window.
I’m excited to be able to show a sneak peak of my colleges new website due to go live on Tuesday! I originally revamped the site in 2003 and it was good for the time but then the content outgrew itself. This new launch was a year in the making with the first half of the year doing nothing but usability testing with our various audience profiles with several different navigation structures. You can read about the process of the usability study here. The main goal was to have a website that was easy to find information and still provided a rich user experience.
Below is a screen capture of our old site. It’s wasn’t even our school colors but the main problem with it was the navigation. The navigation was figured out by a committee in upper management and never really tested with the actual people who would be using the site. You will see that we have “student services” and “student resources” as two major buttons. These two buttons lead to confusion on the part of the student wondering where the information would be located. The question pops up in their head as to what is the difference? To those in academia though student services is considered a department and under it are various services that report to student service managers and deans. This is a problem when listing things under that heading because the managers then say that doesn’t fall under student services when to a student it clearly is a service. By renaming this headings and taking out the term student services all together and just defining a group of users we solved that problem.
Old site
Old college website
For the new site I created beta versions and I conducted tests on groups of faculty and staff, on managers and on current students. I then conducted tests on multible feeder highs schools throughout the area that might be potential students so see if they could find the information they needed. Great care had to be given that I didn’t lead them when asking questions as they navigated through the site.
Once all the testing was done and data was tallied and suggested changes were made it was a process of converting thousands of pages through out the site. The original site was created in CSS and HTML but not in a way that it was easy to swap so many pages needed to be manually generated. During this time a little house keeping was also in order to make friendlier URLs where the web address was just shorter and more intuitive. Not an easy task since I had to find where all the possible link references for readdressing might be. I manage about 40 user connections to the college site so in addition to changing content I needed to keep track of content that is being changed without my knowledge.
Never-the-less below is a screen shot of the new sites home. Most of the large display graphics rotate and change on reload so you’ll get something different each time. There is more real estate for news and events in effort to keep the site fresh. You can view the live site here.
New site
New website showing that much of the content is dynamic
One of the things I am most proud of is being able to deal with an enormous amount of information that is both an improvement to the navigation of the site but is also a menu system that is ADA compliant (something colleges and government sites have to worry about) and is approved in usability testing. The menu system is called “mega menus” that many large scale sites are deploying because you can organize content in categories much like you would in a grocery store where content is grouped in isles for an easier fine.
In addition to the pages with grouped information specific audiences they don’t have to leave the page they are on if they didn’t find what they need there. All they have to do is hover over the other buttons and .5 seconds (enough to determine they meant to hover) a menu will appear giving them an idea of what content is there. This is called “hover intent” and it allows the user to quickly scan the site without having to leave the page they are on. web users can see this navigation on every page of the college website.
The rest of the site is full of college specific information so nothing very showy but I do like the page with the maps and also the development of our college success stories.
The map before was a flat map that didn’t give you a sense of scale. By making it more in perspective it is easier to see where things are in relation to each other. I used zoomify in photoshop so that the user can zoom in on certain areas of the map to see detail
The user can zoom in on the various parts of the map
The student success page features a jquery/CSS based slider of the newest success stories. I wanted to stay away from flash since many of our students access our site from mobile devices.
jquery and CSS slider
A real effort was made to have almost all pages have a uniform look throughout the site. Many sites do a redesign but it doesn’t go past the first top level pages. We didn’t want to launch until all pages of the site looked like they belonged.
Cattail with spent male spike on top and a female spike belowPhoto taken with a Nikon D200, ISO 100 @ F8 for 8 seconds. Side lighting was provided by an iPad.
I’ve grumbled and grumbled about this invasive stand of cattails that has invaded a muddy spot in my garden. I didn’t mind it when it was only a few but they quickly grew. Since they spread by rhizomes it was hard to pull up so they continued to grow. I thought it was time they went but before I started ripping them up I did a little research on this plant. After spending a whole day this weekend enjoying myself with this plant I came to the conclusion my thinking was all wrong. Every part of the plant at some time of the year has a use. The native American Indians used to harvest cattails and after spending a day with them I found out why.
It’s just a few days before the Summer solstice on June 21st and it appears that this is the optimum time at least for some of the things you can do with cattails. Pictures left is a perfect one for harvesting. The brown male and female stalk is not yet visible but tucked neatly between the leaves. Read more →
Ok anyone who knows me knows I like sunflowers. It’s hard to capture what’s magical about them. Maybe it’s just this giant glowing face staring back at me that is almost the same size as my head. The glowing color seems to fill my eyes with sunshine yet it doesn’t hurt to look at. Anyway, whatever it is I love this time of year when my sunflowers open and I get to watch the pollen circle it’s way around the center in concentric rings.
This photo is actually two shots. I lit if from behind and then I lit it from the front to highlight the center and then combined the two. The purpose was to try and capture that glowing nature that always attracts me to sunflowers.
UPDATE: Well as with all good things they come to an end and so did my sunflower. He had a long life standing on the kitchen sink but eventually he drooped his head and went to sleep. He then gave me his petals and it made a nice healthy topping on my roasted chicken with home grown dill and boiled swiss chard 🙂
Sunflower petals have a slight nutty flavor so it’s perfect sprinkled over salads or chicken. When tossed in with salads the color ads quite a flare. In addition they are a great antioxidant and have anti-inflammatory properties.
This is for everyone who has had to create forms on a website to collect information. Unless there is some sort of automatic widget built in to your content management system this can be a complicated or time-consuming task. Google has made this ridiculously simple though so in case you aren’t aware I thought I would share with you how easy it is to make a slick little data collection form in just a few steps.
Create a Google account (https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount) or if you already have a Gmail account just login and click the “documents” link at the very top to login into your Google docs account.
Once there Click the “create new” drop-down button in the upper left and select “form”
From here give the form a name and then you can just start filling in what you want the questions to be. Just keep adding until you are done. You can create simple text fields or get fancier and create multiple-choice buttons and drop down selections.In this example I thought I would make a quick and easy way for me to record what I have planted in my garden. I tend to forget and wonder what that plant is. I always think I will remember what it is and where I got it but never do!
All the information above is collected into an online spreadsheet that you download and open in excel or just store and access on Google docs. You can even share with your friends and co-workers the information. Depending on the information inputted Google will also create a summary of the information with charts where appropriate.
Google also has a number of themes you can choose from. In this page the garden theme works perfectly.
The next step is to embed this form on your website which Google does through the use of an iframe. You can select “embed this form” under the “More actions” button. Copy the little bit of code and paste the HTML into the HTML of your website and you are done.
Unfortunately there aren’t too many themes to choose from and Google doesn’t yet allow you to create your own and you can’t modify the colors, fonts or images by the steps mentioned above.
If you want most of the functionality of the form but want to edit the appearance then you will have to click “view this form” at the bottom and then view the source code in your browser. Copy the code and paste it into your HTML view of your web-editing program. From there you can edit the CSS and alter the appearance and images of the form to match your site. I will get into this in a later blog post in there is interest.
The coolest thing for me is that now I can update what I have done in the garden without having to go to my computer. I just open my iPhone (picture of my scarecrow on the home screen btw) and bring the web page up in the browser and input what I have done right there in the garden before I forget!
