New Website from Long Time Lurker

[Madeleine]

Hi. I think your website looks great! The only thing I would suggest would be to add photos of your breakfasts.
My youngest son went to UVA. I love Charlottesville..

Thanks Country Girl - our food photography is definitely lacking. Thus, no good pictures to post! All of the pictures of the breakfasts look, well, unappetizing... but guests go away happy.
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Thanks Country Girl - our food photography is definitely lacking. Thus, no good pictures to post! All of the pictures of the breakfasts look, well, unappetizing... but guests go away happy.

Like EmptyNest says...we took a day to just make every dish we like to cook, plated it on a white plate (often decorative dishes don't photo well), laid out a place setting and cooked and shot. One photo was so well-liked it ended up on the cover of a cookbook! If you have a north facing window you can get good light from that.
Some of the secret is in cooking for the camera. Some foods look awful when they are cooked for eating vs photographing. Sausage is a good example. A lot of sausages in photos look greasy or uncooked. They have to have a bit of brown to them but not blackened. If it's common to serve a 'Southern' meal of grits, sausage, eggs, biscuits and gravy that is just going to look like a mess of brown and white on a plate. So even if it tastes great it doesn't photo well.
Eggs have to be brilliantly yellow. And if it's an omelet it has to be browned. We can't use our omelet pix because it looks like a dead chicken on the plate! A little more browning and it would have been fine. As is? Dead chicken.
Another option is creative cropping. Cut out the parts that look bad. Focus on what came out well in the photo. You don't have to show the whole plate or the whole table.
I have a photo I love of french toast. There is a big 'snot' of egg white on the side of the bread. Crop crop! It's gone, the photo looks great now.
Don't take all the photos looking straight down at the plate. Shoot from the angle of the diner. Pull all of your serving pieces in close to the plate.
Stuff like that.

 

[user 26]

just took a quick second look ... so much better without the daffodils but if you love them i hope you have a big beautiful picture on your site somewhere.
i love love love the mug picture with the blurred background ... and the autumn colors. makes me want to go there!

 

[Sugaholler]

Final thanks to everyone for the suggestions and comments!

• Fixed the font rainbow - settled on open sans almost everywhere.
• Eliminated the daffodil background, due to popular demand.
• Eliminated the related youtube videos after my video plays.
• Learned how to add/remove sections based on screen size for that slick responsive effect. Squeeze your browser down to mobile size for a surprise offer!
• Made room pricing more transparent across the site.
• Breakfast pictures may be coming soon, we are bartering with a semi-pro photographer, at minimum we are working on some more artistic and interesting pictures of our rooms.

http://www.sugarhollow.com
Thanks again!
If you are interested in taking on a project like this, I would recommend my new host, Squarespace.com - with one caveat - you'll need to be willing to learn some HTML and CSS to take full advantage of your options (or hire a friend to do so!)
Sugaholler

 

[Arks]

A+
And the availability search on the homepage works for me now.

 

[Breakfast Diva]

Final thanks to everyone for the suggestions and comments!

• Fixed the font rainbow - settled on open sans almost everywhere.
• Eliminated the daffodil background, due to popular demand.
• Eliminated the related youtube videos after my video plays.
• Learned how to add/remove sections based on screen size for that slick responsive effect. Squeeze your browser down to mobile size for a surprise offer!
• Made room pricing more transparent across the site.
• Breakfast pictures may be coming soon, we are bartering with a semi-pro photographer, at minimum we are working on some more artistic and interesting pictures of our rooms.

http://www.sugarhollow.com
Thanks again!
If you are interested in taking on a project like this, I would recommend my new host, Squarespace.com - with one caveat - you'll need to be willing to learn some HTML and CSS to take full advantage of your options (or hire a friend to do so!)
Sugaholler.

Looks great Suga!

 

[Joey Camb]

A+
And the availability search on the homepage works for me now..

availability on home page and each bedroom page - excellent! only thing I would say is there any way to make the one on the home page just a scrap bigger? I have 20/20 vision but might be just a bit small to read comfortably for someone else.