noise to signal

A form of validation

At the beginning of this year I taught the first, and so far last, term of my Web Portfolio class at the Photographic Center Northwest. In March, I wrote about some of the challenges of the class.

I later heard from the Executive Director that there had been some pretty harsh criticism of the class that unfortunately didn't make it into the evaluations -- primarily that some of the students thought there was too much focus on design, and not enough time spent working with the tools.

Probably a valid criticism, but when I was planning that first version of the class I decided that the design sections were hugely important. A portfolio site has to support the work. If it doesn't, that disconnect gets in the way of the work. So I spent a lot of time working with the students on refining their sites, pushing them to refine their designs as much as they could.

And it worked, from my point of view: Every site design not only reflected the individual photgraphers' work; it also reflected their design sense, not mine.

The point of all of this is that I got a beautiful note from one of the students from that class today:

Hello David, I wanted to let you know that my website is the featured site of the month at Photo Techniques Magazine newsletter. It was just posted today. I'm sending a link if you want to take a look, or it's under "portfolio" at www.phototechmag.com

Thank you again for all your help and design expertise in the challenge of getting the site to compliment the photos. I wish you very happy holidays. Best Regards, Connie

Ain't that the best?

In case you're reading this after this month, here's the direct link to Connie's site.