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Photographers Portfolio: walt denson.com stays updated on demand and on budget

The Problem

San Francisco based photographer Walt Denson needed a Web site which showed off his commercial photography in a way which would attract a wide audience of Art Directors and other potential clients. He chose to use Macromedia Flash for the presentation for its animation strength and because it makes unauthorized downloading of his images more difficult.

His primary concern however, was for the highest image quality. Any image compression can deteriorate the visual quality of an image. He wanted the ability to tweak compression and color correction settings but didn't want multiple design iterations to drive the budget through the roof. He also wanted easy ability to update the presentation frequently, often a challenging prospect in Flash.

The Solution

Further needs analysis revealed more desires: to be able to run the presentation from a CD ROM as a marketing "leave behind" and to be deliverable on a dial up connection. We had originally planned to use a server side technology (Macromedia Generator) to create the image files at run time, but wanting the portability of a CD-ROM changed that!

We designed a modular architecture where image files were stored separately from the main presentation and were only loaded as needed - this overcame the bandwidth constraint. Selective pre-loading was included for images "most likely" to be chosen next; a fairly linear heuristic was employed.

We employed a free server side tool which mimics some of the functionality of Macromedia Generator, but which produced static Flash (.swf) files as output. We realized that this would overcome the portability issue and make for a faster product be eliminating one server process. We then created an XML structure for describing and sequencing the images into their main categories and a way to upload corrected image files to the server. Running the "Presentation Creation Tool" on the server would read in the XML file, generate the needed Flash files and store them in the proper location. When the viewer played the presentation, the latest and greatest imagery is always waiting to be seen!

Results

Not only was a memorable site produced, but updating it to keep in sync with his other promotional materials is a breeze! Walt keeps his printed advertisements and physical portfolio up to date, and his on-line portfolio synchronized with dramatically less time effort and financial commitment than would be possible with a standard "build and deliver" style of development.

Check out his most excellent photography work at http://www.waltdenson.com