When you first find yourself on Alec Soth's website you are greeted with this massive bold text - a personal couple of sentences about the photographer. This is both a little humorous, and informative, and sets the tone for the rest of the website of one that's not too serious. I like the colour scheme - white, blue, grey and yellow. It's subtle, with splashes of colour here and there to make it interesting. I was also surprised to see that Alec Soth's website is powered by WordPress - a free website template (although he obviously paid for the domain name). It's kind of nice to see that even though he's a very well known and respected practitioner, he hasn't used anything too fancy. It seems to me to be more about the work, rather than the website.
Accessing his work is very easy - just click on the projects link in the bar on the left hand side. This then expands to give you the names of various series' Soth has completed. After selecting which one you want to look at you are greeted with the above - the cover of the book, followed by a photograph of a gallery display, and then the photographs in the series. The scrolling is different from the two websites I have critiqued before, as there is no automatic slideshow. You have to scroll horizontally rather than vertically using the arrow keys. I think this is a good feature - making the most of the space on the page. The images are good quality and a good size. You can also click on individual images to see them on their own.
Even though there is a lot of information about Alec Soth in the CV section of his website it's very concise, and it doesn't feel like you're reading a lot. You can also see that Soth's work has been exhibited a LOT. There is a link to various press about Soth, so we can look at someone else's opinion if we want to, and there is a FAQ on his website - which is always handy. When viewing the website I had no problems with its speed and it's not confusing - far from it. I can't think of anything I would add or take away.
Viewing the website on a phone is much the same experience - although whatever device you're using will need to be held horizontally and zoomed out to the maximum, so that the images fit on the screen and flow more easily. The only trouble I had was if I wanted to click on a specific image to view it bigger. It got stuck, and I couldn't then exit this mode. I just ended up clicking all over the place to try and get rid of the extra window.
Overall, I think out of the three websites I've looked at so far, Alec Soth's has definitely been the best. The colours, the navigation, the images and the amount of information have all been what I would look for when visiting the website of a professional.
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