We've had some discussion around here about what size photo files we should be uploading onto the blog. There are varying opinions on acceptable quality—mine being I want high quality because I want my photos to look good. But I do know that the bigger files slow our site down–so what quality am I willing to accept?
Let's take a look at smaller files. This image of Doug is a good one because there is a lot of important information (his face) in a small area, whereas the rest of the photo (grass, rocks & barn) will suffer less with smaller files.
I'm not going lower then 123K though some think the image shouldn't run over 100K. These smaller files make Doug look like he needs a facial real bad—but the rest of the photo in 135K I could accept. Nothing is acceptable @123 because it's all bad—and bad is never good. What do you think?
Happy quality shooting!
ruhlman
I'd like to hear from anyone for whom this site takes too long to load. Thanks for all comments!
mike
Donna,
A year+ ago I started taking pix and blogging largely due to your work. For a while there'd been a link to your photo blog off the banner on Michael's main page but it went away when the page was re-styled. I'd assumed your blog had gone with the link. Anyhow, I am very grateful to learn you're still posting and trying to help us hacks. Keep it up and thanks for all you do.
Donna Turner Ruhlman
Thanks—I know I have a lot to learn. I just attended a seminar in NYC given by Elizabeth Watt—she not only shared her "tricks" but was articulate talking about the creative process.
I just learned of this link from our Emilia:
http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/food-photography-how-to-shoot-ugly-food/?src=twt&twt=nytimesdining
Practical and very informative. Check it out—I will be
Jonathan Abbett
This day and age, your speed benchmarks should focused on mobile visitors.
I've seen that ruhlman.com uses a separate, simpler theme for mobile visitors, but it doesn't seem to work for the food photography section. I switched to the regular view, which was very slow to load.
For example, this single blog page requires 52 web requests and 3/4 of a megabyte in data. Fortunately, much of those web requests will be cached for subsequent visits, but the first-time experience is poor.
I don't notice any appreciable difference in the three versions with a casual glance. I'd say ratchet down your file sizes and let users click the picture to get high-res versions.
Zachary Reiss-Davis
I agree with the previous commenter; I'm fine with large, gorgeous photos (and prefer them! I love Donna's work) for the regular website, although it's worth considering a separate style sheet that renders the page with smaller images for mobile devices, if you care enough to bother.