photo and film

[waterworker]

http://www.catchmagazine.net/ Some great photo's and be sure to click on the two T- motion theater video's.

[Jon]

-WW - Great, great pictures, and the first video is just immense. They look like fun fish!

JA

[Tidal]

Good stuff - I just got sucked into the vortex of past issue videos - don't click on the link if you have things to do in the next 1/2 hour or so!!!!!...or do!

[Andrew]

- don't click on the link if you have things to do in the next 1/2 hour or so!!!!!...

You mean because the site is so hard to navigate? I lost patience after just a few minutes.

[Jon]

True. Click on the pages to the right until you come to T Motion presents...El Dorado. I think you'll like the film.

[waterworker]

True. Click on the pages to the right until you come to T Motion presents...El Dorado. I think you'll like the film.

it says next page(bottom right)

[Andrew]

I saw the El Dorado film, and it was very good. I watched a couple others as well.

But in my opinion, the contents ought to be easy to understand, and the films ought to either have informative titles, or a description. In a perfect world, I'd sit all day and watch them all. But I'd like to be able to look at a list of all of them, and quickly know which ones are about steelhead, which ones are about tarpon, etc. As far as I could tell, some of them are just called "movie".


Maybe it's just the particular browser I'm using, but I also found that things jumped backwards and forwards on me for no apparent reason.

I'm sorry, but in this day and age, it's just too easy to make a webpage that's dummy proof, even for a dummy like me.

[Tidal]

My name is Val and I'm a Mac and I like this site.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew, and I'm a Mac too, but I'm married to a PC, and I accessed the site through her, along with the help of Explorer.


And I still don't like the format of that site.

[Jon]

the contents ought to be easy to understand

They are pictures of little fishies Andrew.

No, I agree wit you, it's a horrid site. A thousand lashes to WW for darkening our doorstep ;-)

[waterworker]

I'm also a mac and I can't understand what your talking about....Interesting.....Runs like butter here.

[Jon]

WW - It runs fine for me also, but I think the criticism is of the somewhat messy layout and weird navigability of the site. The pictures are very nice though. :-)

Jon

[Andrew]

Yes, I'm referring to the navigability. The photos are fabulous, and some of the videos are really nice as well. I'm not so much into the idea of making fly fishing videos look like something skateboarding teenagers would be in to, but that's just me.


But of the site layout: What purpose does the moving string of thumbnails on the bottom serve? And why does it seem to zip back and forth so quickly at times? How do I know that I want to watch a given video if it's simply called "Video by Todd Moen"? Or that I want to look at a photo essay if it's titled "Photo Essay". And why do some videos and photo essays have somewhat informative or interesting titles, and others don't? Somewhere I even came across a "How to navigate this site" set of instructions. Not that they were terribly helpful, but if your site requires such instructions, perhaps you ought to change the sites layout. Why can I click on all the back issues from some pages, but when I get to other pages, certain (but not all) of the back issues are no longer "clickable", even if I'd previously viewed them? The whole "page layout" thing makes it appear as if they are trying to make the site look like a paper magazine, but isn't the whole point of the internet that it allows you to do things that you cannot do in print media? A glossy, full page photo that turns out to be an ad?? The nice thing about internet sites is that the ads are shoved off to the side, so you can ignore them if you wish, not have to "page" through them to get to the next photo essay...oh wait, that's not a photo essay, it's another full page ad. Ah, this must be the photo essay, since it's called "Photo Essay". I wonder what it's about?



Best of luck to them. I'm predicting the format will eventually change.

[Z Fisher]

Wicked great video of the Dorado.

Most of the new fly fishing e-zines have a similar layout so once you've seen one you can figure out the others. Some are better executed than this one. This is Fly thisisfly.com is probably the best from a usability perspective though I find their graphic design a bit annoying. Fish can't read fishcantread.com is more of a traditional magazine layout with usability that's relatively good.

[Adam Taylor]

I doubt the format will go away. It is the way of the future. And I am not saying that is a good thing. But pubs like Gray's are dinosaurs. There are a lot of folks pushing out content digitally. It is infinitely cheaper, cost per customer acquisition is ridiculously cheap....

regarding navigation, the tiles do move a bit quick...that could be coded better. But just click on content and use that to navigate.

Also...Andrew...I say this with all due respect. We, and that includes me, are not the target demo for a lot of the films now.

Regardless of opinions...the visuals are amazing. The issue #2 cover is absolutely amazing. I would love to take 1 photo like that in my lifetime.-

[Jon]

Adam - are you saying that Old Man Stoehr isn't a skaterboarder type? He pulls a fairly mean 360 Frontside Nosegrind.

I'd give you the url, but it's a bugger to navigate....

JA

[Adam Taylor]

Adam - are you saying that Old Man Stoehr isn't a skaterboarder type? He pulls a fairly mean 360 Frontside Nosegrind.

I'd give you the url, but it's a bugger to navigate....

You owe me a new keyboard...the coffee came flying out of my mouth when I read that. :)

[Andrew]

I doubt the format will go away. It is the way of the future. And I am not saying that is a good thing. But pubs like Gray's are dinosaurs. There are a lot of folks pushing out content digitally. It is infinitely cheaper, cost per customer acquisition is ridiculously cheap....

regarding navigation, the tiles do move a bit quick...that could be coded better. But just click on content and use that to navigate.

Also...Andrew...I say this with all due respect. We, and that includes me, are not the target demo for a lot of the films now.

Regardless of opinions...the visuals are amazing. The issue #2 cover is absolutely amazing. I would love to take 1 photo like that in my lifetime.-

I can find my way through the site. That's not what I'm saying. And I agree that the basic visual impression (big color, lots of well-produced short videos, etc) is here to stay. (And that it's impressive.) But I've seen other sites that have all the things this site has, but are much easier (in my opinion) to navigate. And it's hard for me to imagine that "Video" as a title is the new wave of the future.

With respect to their target audience, I agree with you there. I'm not their target audience, and we (I and the "skaterboarder fly fishermen) seem to be in mutual agreement on that! I'm not a bit surprised though.

I've been old since I was young.

[Kierran]

I've been old since I was young.

Good quote there buddy.

I dig the HQ fish porn on the e-mags. Makes me want to get a real camera.

[Andrew]

I like a lot of it too. I wasn't suggesting all those videos were no good. But some of them include some things I find kind of silly. For example, there was one that showed O'Keefe mountain biking along to some sort of secluded little trout streams. Lots of nice scenery, great shots of fish taking flies, jumping, etc.

But, there was one scene where he rides his bike across a little stream, and the film goes to slow motion to show him crossing the stream. First off, it's not like it was a video about extreme mountain biking. But in any case, it's not like he jumped the stream! He just rode through 4 inches of water...the way my 6 year old would do it. But they incorporate this slo-mo effect as if he's doing some sort of Evel Knievel stunt (for those too young to know, he was a crazy dude who made long jumps on motorcycles). But all he did was ride a bike through 4 inches of water! That's the stuff that gets me. Show me fish jumping all day, and show it in slo-mo...great stuff. But that other stuff??

It reminded me of a skit Dave Chappelle did (for those too young to know, Dave Chappelle is a comedian who had a funny show, a long, long time ago.). In it, he shows how everything looks better in slow motion!

(http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=219355&title=better-in-slow-motion)