http://bowenstudios.com/

Again, this is a site featured on the fwa. This time however, I wasn't all that impressed. When you've seen flash sites done really well, it's disappointing to use one which fails on many levels. The company itself produce Architectural illustrations, so the main focus of the site is the imagery they can create. This aspect has been covered, in that your entire browser window is filled with an image from a project. The quality of images is rather blurry however, and they still take a while to load up. When they do load, they don't quite fit in to the area of the screen properly, so you have to move your mouse around to view all of it. While it's a nice interactive element, it slows things down. I also found it a bit misleading, in that there's an arrow which follows your cursor. I thought this was to move around the image with, but what it acts as is a forward and back button, but this isn't clear. The user interface is, like the rest of the site, a bit slow and a bit dull.

http://www.fabiolana.com/

This is an example of an effective portfolio site, especially for people who want to display a lot of still media. Fabio Lana is a photographer who produces a lot of commercial pieces. His website is very flashy and modern. I suppose that being a photographer, you have to keep everything related to your work fashionable. It makes great use of contrast, with white text on a black background. The typography is very clean and vivid as well, reducing any clutter. Navigating the site is a lot of fun. Images are browsed using the arrows on your keyboard, and it flicks through photos, rather like apples 'coverflow'. While it looks cool, it can be a little slow and confusing, so an alternative is provided which makes browsing a lot faster.