Tankmomma, I've enjoyed our brief conversations and learning of your aspirations to expand on your photographic talents.  My wife found that most studios do a pretty poor job of capturing the nature and individuality of children, so she started doing shoots of of our kids and those of our friends.  Word is spreading fast, and she has at least one shoot every weekend.  We have a simple kit (needs upgrading) where we use a Nikon D100, and a variety of Nikkor lenses (f1.4 50mm, f3.5 18-35mm, f3.5 35-80mm, etc).

Most of her shoots are on-site (though we do have some homemade backdrops and some simple studio lights), and she allows herself to not take jobs <--- important/ to maintain her sanity as a full time mom part time photographer.

Anyway, since the demand is there, I've starting building her website.  It's not perfect, and I know that there are some basic flaws in my code, but I am not a coder, and this is my first attempt as web development.  I didn't use any fancy tools, just Notepad ++ and a lot of trial and error.  I managed to squeeze out an ASP contact form, JavaScript (which will be used when the galleries are ready) and basic HTML in a somewhat painful 3 day development effort.  Yes, I do realize that I could have used the same style sheet over and over, but I didn't figure that out until I was done.  

I do welcome constructive criticism, and will always welcome volunteers who want to offer improvements (or better yet...a flash version of this site).  Thanks for looking!

http://www.rudicilphotography.com

EDIT:  Her website is a terribly weak reflection of her work.  She has a bunch of stuff on her blog too, though it's a little more snapshot-y.  Still you can get the idea of her style/ability.
http://jelloflinger.blogspot.com/

If you send that link to Mr T and a banner he can post it to our link section. Never hurts to have some free advertising...

GOA.Luke*BK*

For just Notepad ++ that is a great job. You might want to set the white background part of the site to be the same size on all pages. Maybe break the form into two columns.

Hello Tripod.  Wow the opening picture is just stunning.  You did a great job on the site so far.
I'm looking forward to when you get the galleries up to see some of her work in color.  I did check out her blog, and am looking forward to seeing more of her professional work.

I have also enjoyed the conversations we have had.  I am at the point right now of starting to think about building a portfolio.   I'm hoping to con some of my childhood friends  I mean offer to shoot my childhood friend's kids this summer  in exchange for using some of the pics to build a portfolio.  (Not to mention get some experience shooting kids I don't know that well.)  I only have a few lenses with my Canon 40D.  Most of my people shots are with either my f1.8 50mm (The thrifty fifty) or my new Tamron f2.8 18-50mm.  

Hearing of your wife's success leaves me hopeful for the future.  I have so much still to learn - but I'm getting there.

Sorry I couldn't respond earlier - I was working on finishing a collage I'm doing for my parents 50th Wedding anniversary.  It was last week but we are taking them out this weekend.  I can't wait to give it to them, its a surprise.  Now I just have to upload the pictures to mpix and order them - and HOPE I can get them by Friday.  Well, I'm sure mpix will come through for me - they always do.  If you are interested, here is a link to the collage on my flickr. Collage  

Now if I could only decide between the dark blue background and the light blue background.  lol

I just learned that i can set page dimensions as a percentage, and not a static X,Y.  I'll likely tweak all of those accordingly.  As for the contact form, I can certainly break that into two columns.

My wife starting putting her portfolio/gallery pics together last night.  Hopefully she'll have that ready by this weekend so I can get more content in place.

Anyone have some Javascript-based image gallery examples that you like?  I like the idea of having a horizontal scroll of thumbs with a medium sized image above the selected thumb.  Not 100% how to code that, so I'll like have to find some template code and tweak it...that or get permission from a website that does it really well.  If you have examples, I'd appreciate that.

As for the generous offer to provide a link and banner for free advertising - I'd love to, but want to wait until the site is completed.  Thanks all!

http://www.filefactory.com/file/ag1ah9c/n/flash_gallery_rar

Here is the link to a free flash gallery. You only have to keep the link on it. You put all your photographs in the "Gallery" folder and name them 0, 1, 2..... Thumbnails go in the same folder but with names s0, s1,s2,.....

Then you tweak the images.xml file. There are some images I used on my friend's beauty salon site in the folder for example. You can even change colors of the gallery if you use a flash editor.

filefactory appears to be a hosting site.  I have a web server and hosting server, just need the proper code (or in this case flash and xml) to arrange and present the images from my server.
Maybe I'm missing something?

Download flash image gallery

maybe this will help

I use simpleviewer on my site, its free and very easy to use. Click on any of th links at the top to see simpleviewer

Ed Baumgarten Photography

you can get simple viewer here:

SimpleViewer

I uploaded it to filefactory site so you can download.

"sorry, the time to enter the code has expired"
-Filefactory

I've downloaded the image viewer from Baument, I'll play around with that this weekend.  there are a few others that I've found as well.  Looks like I need to learn some XML.  Shouldn't be any more difficult that learning ASP, Javascript, or HTML- right?

ooh...I really like dfGallery.

Edit:  My wife likes Simple Viewer.  Looks like that'll be the one!  thanks for the guidance fellas!

Ok.  XML is ridiculously easy.  I should be able to have her gallery done this weekend - no problem.  I'll post in here to let you all know when its done, along with the other suggested edits.

OK, so the weekend was busier than i expected.  My wife had two shoots, which left me with the kids and a  lot of house work to do, and I was a wee bit hungover from a late night by the fire Sunday night.

I'll try to get the website done this week.  We'll see.  Summers (or late spring in this case) are a busy time of year for us.

Just an update, I rebuilt my site and went to a fullscreen flash site.......take a look when you get a minute........

HERE

Ed - that's an awesome site you've built