Author: Cole
Website: cseto.xyz

Cole's site, Cole's Cinematography, immediately presents itself to the audience as a cinematography orientated portfolio and blog. The landing page plays a short looping video in the background showcasing what you can expect to see from Cole, as well a call to action buttons to learn about the author and his blog. Navigating to other pages, the site maintains large headers which display videos and still images of his work, followed by the content. In particular I really enjoyed the personality in his images and bio, as well as a concise description of what he sets out to curate for his audience. I feel it would be nice as a reader to hear more about your interest, motivation, or inspiration when it comes to cinematography, and maybe also any relevant links to your work. Similarly I felt while exploring your site that adding more of a personal spin on your content is what would round out the experience and establish the site as your own slice of the web—maybe even reproduce a sense of the sublime you reference through it.

Past the about page, I easily found his blog. Although it appears the same blog content is shown both in the PUB 101 and Blog sections under different looks. I liked how the PUB 101 page shows each post as a card on top of an image, however the light background clashed with the overall dark theme, and the light grey author byline was hard to read. The Blog page again shows each article as a card, but this time keeps a dark aesthetic and uses Cole's established primary font colour which is more coherent and has readable contrast. I found the carousel layout for his posts easy to navigate both on mobile and desktop.

The content itself is of high quality and reflects the tone of his about section well. I expect it will grow with due time but I would love to see more content related to Cole's passion for cinematography whether it be reviews of a subgenre, behind the scenes look at his work, or even an info-dump on something he has been thinking about. I got a taste of this in the embodied guest post and most recently the media story. I invite the reader to check these out as well!

I have limited criticism and it all is coming from a constructive intention. Immediately on loading the site, it redirects to an IP (http://153.92.214.200/) rather than loading the content at the specified domain name. This is likely an easy fix in the DNS settings, maybe something like changing the DNS record. Updating this could make the site come off as more trustworthy and might allow for an SSL certificate to be applied adding another layer of trust. The secondary font colour used in body copy text (like this) is a neutral grey, which I found readable but could easily be inaccessible for users with contrast difficulties. Choosing white or a lighter grey could fix this without impacting the vibe. Lastly, I found the navigation tricky. Beyond the home page and blog posts as the navbar in the header changes format depending on the page, sometimes making it difficult to navigate back. Alongside the navigation, some internal links (such as opening blog posts) open in a new tab, which can cause many table to pile up without noticing. This could also be made more accessible by adding a footer to all pages of the website with a sitemap including relevant links to the home, about, and blog sections—as well as links to social media presence like YouTube, Vimeo, or Instagram if applicable.

I think Cole's Cinematography has great potential for a blog and portfolio complementing his work in cinematography, and I look forward to revisiting at the end of the semester with cinematography content. The strong, concise personality of the site sets not only clear expectations for the audience but also excitement to see what is in store.