ImageGarden Photography

This is the new website for my photography business. I created the original webpage for ImageGarden a year ago when I barely knew HTML, and after much learning I created the current page. It uses fully valid XHTML Strict and no tables whatsoever. It has a Javascript-powered gallery as well as a set of mini-galleries on the Services. I'm especially proud of the popup window system, which I use for mail forms and the aforementioned mini-galleries. The mail form was adapted from a minimalist clone of the Lightbox system.

I want to iron out any flaws in the site, so give it your harshest critique! If you want to see my original page and compare it to the new one, it's archived at http://www.imagegardenphoto.com/oldsite. Thanks for reading.

I had a great time looking through your site and all of your photos.

Things I love!
*Your writing is fabulous. It flows and tells such a great story while hitting ALL the right points and some unexpected points (photography at gunpoint?)
*Love the Welcome graphic and Want to know more graphic? Again use of headline question there was perfect.
*Use of testimonials is fabulous. So many people neglect to use those and I find them to be of utmost importance in building trust.
*Very much enjoyed the gallery section. Very easy to navigate and view.
*Coding is excellent and XHTML Strict gives me goose bumps.

Things I'm not wild about but are of personal taste only and can be completely ignored:
*The navigation is not my favorite. The primary colors I find distracting and in competition with your photography.

Things to work on:
*SEO. Implement page Titles, h1, h2, h3, etc tags, meta tags for keywords and descriptions as a minimum. (I know some people find the last two a waste but I can't take the chance)

Design: 4 out of 5
Code: 4.5 out of 5
Functionality: 4 out of 5 (only due to some javascript)
Accessibility: 2 out of 5
SEO: 0 out of 5

Thanks for your comments. I'd actually forgotten to put in the meta tags, but they're now up. Heading tags are a bit tricky, since the header for each section is an image with text, and I use a PHP templating system for each page so title changes aren't really possible. I could put section headers in invisible divs, but I understand that's considered a "black hat" SEO techinque. I can use header tags for the bold text seen in places, like "Rates" and "Click to jump to a section," but that text isn't really relevant to the site content.

You're not the first person to say you dislike the nav, so I'm thinking of making the tabs a bit thinner. I could make them all gray and use the rollover texture alone to differentiate them, but I think the site could use some color outside the photos.

I appreciate the feedback.

I gree with the nav buttons - change the tones slightly,
and also make the text smaller and i think that will solve the problem.