Comments on: Photo galleries on news Web sites

By: C. Spencer Beggs

C. Spencer Beggs — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:48:09 +0000

Here’s a slide show player I designed for The New York Times Syndicate: http://www.jutarnji.hr/svijet/americki_izbori

Click on the faded pic of McCain and Obama in the right column.

The goal here was to have smooth transitions, an uncluttered interface, ad space and a delivery system that doesn’t interfere with browsing of the rest of the site.

By: Mindy

Mindy — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:18:23 +0000

Hey, Tom, I blogged about a fine example of that once — Journalism 101: Pictures sell news — in a case where a serious news story received lots of attention because of a magazine cover photo.

By: Tom Burton

Tom Burton — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:21:16 +0000

Mindy;
William Randolph Hearst was once quoted as saying, “Give me a magazine cover with a beautiful girl, a dog, or a baby on it, and I’ll give you a magazine that sells.” A lot of that still holds true. The OMG news photo works for us as a thumbnail but so do photos of beautiful women and cute or weird animals. An albino alligator is always a winner.
It’s important to remember that the photos of the day is not all fluff but it’s also not fluff-free. We hope to edit in a full range of photos. And based on traffic, we do much better when we do over the variety.

Tom

By: Luke Morris

Luke Morris — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:29:42 +0000

It’s sad when it takes more time to go through a flash photo gallery than to click and have to reload the entire page for the next picture like you must with Chicago Tribune photo galleries.

By: Mindy

Mindy — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 03:18:09 +0000

Thanks, Tom. That’s a particularly fascinating fact abut the thumbnail! An “impulse click” indeed!

Some journalists scoff at editing for the audience, but it doesn’t have to mean fluff and baby animals, as your tornado example indicates.

By: Tom Burton

Tom Burton — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:10:36 +0000

Mindy,
You’re right that a clunky interface can drive away online traffic. Ours is the same as LATimes, and although it could be faster, it usually works pretty fast. It’s not real pretty, though.
But you almost ran past the more important element — editing. We have been working on our photo galleries this year on http://www.orlandosentinel.com and have increased traffic significantly by editing more carefully and then watching how the users respond. For our photos of the day feature, we include staff photos and links in captions to stories or other galleries. The most significant decision is the edit of the promo photo, or “thumbnail”. It is sort of like a magazine cover, grabbing the user’s attention. I say that most galleries are an “impulse click” and you need the right photo to attract a user. With the right thumbnail, our photos of the day can draw more than 100,000 page views in a day.
It is also humbling to watch the site traffic as it responds to your edit. A photo you like because it is graphic or artsy could stop traffic cold while a camera phone photo of a tornado will light it up. It brings us closer to the idea of editing for our audience — something we might have strayed away from in the print realm in the recent past.

Tom

By: Angela Grant

Angela Grant — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:42:26 +0000

Great points Mindy!

By: Mindy

Mindy — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:13:21 +0000

@roberto - I’m in ur head, stealin’ all ur thots.

The L.A. Times does the dumb page-loading thing … but theirs is a lot faster than my local paper’s.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/photography/

By: roberto villalpando

roberto villalpando — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:32:04 +0000

you’ve been eavesdropping on my conversations again. the “good enough” philosophy and the page views obsession is killing quality and the incentive to innovate. i do think the LA times uses photo galleries effectively because they use the captions to create a narrative, rather than photos for photos’ sake.