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Content
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| Quality : |
16.5 / 20 |
| Quantity : |
11.0 / 15 |
| Entertain : |
13.0 / 15 |
| Updates : |
7.0 / 10 |
| Exclusive : |
5.0 / 05 |
| Download : |
3.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
55.5 / 70 |
| Navigation |
| Easy : |
6.5 / 10 |
| Features : |
2.5 / 05 |
| Design : |
2.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
11.0 / 20 |
| Other |
| Originality : |
3.5 / 05 |
| Hard Facts : |
3.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
6.5 / 10 |
Scoring Criteria New
New Update!
As of Aug 15th, 07, price of a site is no longer factored into the overall score/rank. |
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| Editor: Spencer |
Initial Review: 06-10-08 |
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1. Exclusive content.
2. Nince-looking imagery.
3. Newest photos are looking better.
1. Pretty difficult to get around.
2. Design is very plain.
3. Updates aren't dated.
4. Older photos are a bit smaller.
"The photography is pretty nice here, but the actual site itself is holding them back a bit for now." |
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Today we have a site called Free Form Studios up for review. It's a photography site that focuses on picture of natural, nude women and the female form in general. They have a good sample of pictures in the tour you can check out to see what kind of photography we're talking about. I can't quite tell if this is all from one photographer (which I assume it is), because there's no mention of who this mysterious photographer may be. Also, there are no videos here for now, so hopefully that's not a huge concern for you. Membership is very cheap at $13 for the first month, and just $10 a month after that.
The goods:
- Exclusive content. After looking around the site, I'd say that Free Form Studios is definitely all shot by one photographer, and that the content is all exclusive here.
- Nice-looking imagery. I like the natural beauty type stuff that they shoot here. You'll never find anything too blatantly sexual, but they also don't shy away from showing everything from tame, to butts spread wide open.
- Newest photos are looking better. They have slowly added pictures that were larger than the previous stuff, and the brand newest ones are now at 2000 pixels and look much better. For a photography site, I'm always interested in the largest pictures I can get that still look perfect, so it's nice to see they are moving in that direction.
The bads:
- Pretty difficult to get around. While he's great behind the camera, a webmaster he is not. The new model's index helps a little, but even that is setup weird with just one girl per line (meaning a ton of scrolling). I'd love this site a lot more if a professional re-did the site (even if they kept it very simple) to make getting around easier. Everything from the gallery layouts to the update page just isn't what we're used to, and doesn't flow as well.
- Design is very plain. Pretty similar to the navigation complaints, the gray background and white text don't really do the site justice. A few nice graphics here and there to spice things up would make it feel more professional here.
- Updates aren't dated. They say they add something new every few day or so, depending on the shooting schedule, but nothing is dated. I'm not sure how often they actually update. Hell, I wasn't even sure which of the galleries were new vs. old when I first started browsing (hint: they let you know that the higher page numbers have the newest stuff once you read through the site).
- Older photos are a bit smaller. While the newer photos are looking decent, the older photos are a bit smaller and not quite as impressive. They still look decent in terms of photography and quality, they're just smaller.
Conclusion:
I think that Free Form Studios is a newer site, run by a photographer (not a webmaster), and has some room for growth. I like the pictures, so that's a great start (and possibly the most important part). The site itself falls way short in my opinion, and is a big stumbling block for now. Hopefully that can get better in time, along with some consistency across the board. Keep the new large photos, get on a regular dated update schedule, add things like biographies for the models to give it more personality, etc. Like I said, it's not a bad start, but there's a lot more they could do with the site I think.
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