I looked at a lot of websites before deciding what to do about displaying the images. Several considerations weighed in my final decision.

First, and foremost, was an underlying design consideration. I wanted my virtual gallery to have the feel of a real gallery with lots of small rooms. I also wanted to limit the number of images per page and group them in logical ways as if they were hung in a real gallery. Four to twelve images per pages seemed like the outside limits, and six to ten images per page is just about right.

Second, in keeping with the room/page design consideration, I decided in the main to have all the images in full viewing size on the page. Thumbnails linked to larger images are useful in some instances, but they are not for me (there may be a few exceptions to this rule). I also don’t like pages that take you through a series of pictures by the use of a “next” button.

Third, I determined that if I sized a photo so that its actual size was not more than 9-inches high or 11-inches wide (at 72 pixels per inch), then both the top and bottom of the image would be fully visible at the same time. After viewing an image the viewer can scroll down slightly and see my caption. After an image and caption are viewed the observer can then scroll to the next one. Best of all, one can go back and forth to all the images on the page with ease. Samples of my photos, in portrait and landscape format, with captions, are shown below to illustrate how they look on the page.

Fourth, I wanted the pages to load reasonably fast. I assumed that by 2001 most people will have or soon be using modems with a speed of at least 56 Baud. To assure a fast load I limited the number of graphic element per page and keep the image file size down. By experimenting I found that I could get a good image from a file that was from 25 to 50 Kb in size, and I try to compress the files to between 30 to 50 Kb in size.

Fifth, and this is something new as of May 2005, I will begin to do some experimenting with photo slide shows created using the automated procedures available in Photoshop. I will consider pages that have a regular format, and a slideshow option that will offer many more images alond the same line as the others on a page.

In some instances it may be important to show a photo in a larger size. When those times come, a hyperlink to a larger image will be provided. And who know, I may even start showing images that a larger in size.

Keeping photos small in both actual and file size also provides a fairly reasonable guard against unfair use. If someone wants to make a copy of an image for their personal reference use they easily can do so, and copying several images will not require much hard drive space. However, if someone copies an image file and tries to enlarge it, the image literally comes apart. If a person really wants to use one of my images for a legitimate purpose they can contact me and we can work out an arrangement that will give them a file in a usable size and provide some form of reasonable compensation to me.