Innovative "pinwheel" photo gallery design from thewhalehunt.org.

So you've made some great pictures and now you want to share them with the world?  There are many ways to do that and lots of photo gallery and slide show designs published on the internet to use as inspiration.  I asked my friend and colleague Jim Webb to share some web photography galleries that caught his eye.  He sent a group of links to photo galleries that can be created with a range of tools from free web software  through handmade creations designed and coded professionally.

• The Whale Hunt - Jim says, "Clearly a designer spent a LOT of time and energy on this, but the story suffers because it's too tricked out (and not edited at all). The wavy line at the bottom, meant to represent how frequently the photographer shot photos, is an ingenious device. Visually it looks like an audio clip, so it suffers a bit in the execution, but what a cool idea. It'd be neat for sports coverage — the spots when the most photos are being taken are usually some of the interesting moments."  Be sure to check out the three views of the story: mosaic, pinwheel and timeline.
• Filippa Smedhagen Sund  - Photo intensive web site of a Swedish makeup artist.  The site features full screen images and tactile navigation with a hand flipping motion reminiscent of Apple's touch screen iPods photo interface. 
• Kimm Saatvedt - Photographer's site with images that resize to fill the browser.  All navigation and captions are in a bar that appears when the mouse hovers above it.  Loading time for the next images is slow for my tastes.
• Way to Blue - Photographer Stephen Mefford's blog, online since 2002.  Simple navigation and a single popup with engaging photography.  If only photo blogging templates were this good.
• Flickr slideshows (Brian Talbot's popular images), "Interestingness" Sampler) - Flickr accounts are free and the slide shows are easy to make ... just add "/show/" to the end of most links or click the slideshow button on the page.
• Flickr Related Tag Browser - Love exploring Flickr?  This is the same as doing a tag search at Flickr but with a floating design created by Airtight Interactive.
• TiltViewer - Another way to access Flickr's interesting photos in a 3D space.  Watch out before you visit this site if you get woozy easily.
• Javier Ferrer Vidal - Photographer site with a 3D floating stack of photos, complete with background music.
• Studio Stemmler - Photographer Klaus Stemmler's studio web site with an interesting grid design. 

Enjoy the links and the inventive ways to display photography.  Before you go out and create your masterpiece consider these thoughts from Jim Webb:

There are a lot of skilled designers doing innovative visual design and UI with photo galleries. The problem is, most of them suck. Don't get me wrong, they're often visually stunning, and to web workers like me they're interesting and exciting. But regular people don't generally care about the UI of photo galleries. They care about the photos. If the UI gets in the way, then the photos lose. Likewise, if the photos aren't great, or well-edited, or tell a compelling story, then they lose.

Even a subtle fade-in effect between photos — a common and fairly minor UI embellishment used in galleries — is bad if it feels like it's keeping you from what you were here to see: the photo. In that case we're talking fractions of a second making a huge difference, especially when a user is clicking quickly between photos.

Let me say it again: the best photo gallery designs are the ones where you don't notice the design.

Thanks for these links goes out to Jim Webb and his crew including Josh Williams, JoJo Spiker and Damon Fodge.

Have your own favorite web site with a design that is not to be missed?  Let us know in the comments.

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