...Ok, I've been and seen Ami's site. Nice site. ...... I'd be interested in how this site of Ami's works for a 56k dial up person if anyone checks it out......
I have to agree, it is a very nice arrangement of some very excellent photographs. But their impact has nothing to do with Ami's use of Flash. It has to do with the power of the images themselves AND the way in which she has organized them to tell a story. The site is not so much about the photographs as it is about telling the story associated with them. A very important aspect of the photojournalism in which she is engaged.
By using Flash she has imitated the older technique of a simple slide show. She didn't need Flash to do this. It could have been done just as effectively in Photoshop or a simple web design program that would have made it accessible to more people without Flash.
But more people is not her audience. Her audience is the ADs and editors who will buy individual use rights. They will not have the software limitations of the rest of us.
I viewed her site on an older Mac G3 using Netscape 7 on a 56k dial up. It took about a minute and a half for the intro to finish loading, the same for the viewing pop up window to load, something I find annoying, and two minutes or more for the longest portfolio to load. One thing I found valuable is that the images of each portfolio load in order so that each image was available by the time I clicked its thumbnail.
I didn't look at every portfolio, only two of them. It was half way through the second that I stumbled onto the captions available via the blue rollover that appears when a link is selected. An interesting technique. But again, nothing on this site needs Flash to do what it does. I doubt her site has won awards because it uses Flash.
That being said, the use of rollovers and pages containing multiple images presented with even the simplest techniques and software requires time to load over a 56K dialup. I have a page on my website to present my 2004 calendar. It contains a text block and three images accessed via rollovers, the only such page on my site. It takes me about a minute to load and each image, all of which are there all the time whether viewed or not, takes a couple seconds to appear when each rollover is activated. I made this page in Photoshop 6.
Peace! Sidney
