The last 2 years I have spent a lot time working on new projects for the Photography business I work for. Always a challenge during the holidays is how to make good looking advertisements and create content that will attract the attention of potential clients. It has been one of the greatest challenges since I started doing website production work back in 1997. The balance between fast loading and high quality. All while at the same time not crashing the users browser or forcing them to upgrade before being able to view what you have created. I faced these issues head on two fold this last quarter of 2008. On top of creating our new promo DVD up from the Standard DVD of 720x480 up to Blu-Ray Definition 1920x1080. This was fueled by me finally buying a new TV this year. I have been lugging around the same 1980 wood framed console TV. Once I saw the clarity of a 40" Sony BRAVIA LCD I just had to make the move. Â
This effort was a challenge in itself. First challenge, what was the right TV to recommend for the studio? Then obviosly the player. Even down to the cable and calibrating the LCD. But in the end we walked away with a video screaming at 1080p.  It's not a feature film with CGI but it definately put some compitition on alert. However, it was really the easiest part of this two part project. Â
Part two was taking the same video and playing the juggle game. Should we post a huge video? Should we make it half size? Can people download it easy? What if they don't have flash? All sorts of other questions like; What kind of music to play? How long? My brain was about fried by the time I got some of the test ones online. We struggled through some intiial feedback and went back and reoptimized the project. It was a hard decision but I opted for the newer scripting of Actionscript 3 over 2. Basically, in my opinion, if you have a flash version you might as well have the most updated version. Finally after a week of testing I finally confinced enough people to keep up our video. It is 10 megabytes, which is quite a bit to shove people on the front of a website. But its not much bigger than probably 90% of myspace profiles.Â
You can view it here:
http://www.freelandphotography.com
So we are going big on the website, big on TV, and thinking big for 2009. The next wave is to take it the full spectrum and work on a mobile designed website. For all the iPhone and Blackberry users I now know, which includes myself. Â
