Jay Fisher - Fine Custom Knives

The Progression of Internet Photography and Knife Illustration

When I started this website, there were plenty of folks (me included) using 1200 baud rate modems over the telephone line to access the internet. Download times were slow, painfully so, and every web developer generally agreed that in order to keep frustration levels at a minimum, it was best to keep photographs, files, and web pages as small as possible. This made sense in the mid-1990s, but that is the past.

As computers, memory sizes, and computer access to the internet grew, so did the size of computer monitors. The progression was natural and reasonable; no one likes looking at tiny photos of any product, person, or any kind of small illustration. You can't see a heck of a lot in a photograph that is only two inches tall and three inches wide, and that is what most of my older pictures are from this time. With the website upgrade taking place in 2008-2010, I've decided to go back to my photo archives, and enlarge all of the photos I can to better illustrated the knives. I've also taken the time to clean up some of the photos from my chemical photography printing days, correct the color balance, removing dust, and annotating them where necessary. This will give a much better idea to my clients, past, present, and future, of what I have made and what I can do.

My topics and the general direction of up-scaling photos have not gone unnoticed; I receive plenty of email with positive reaction to the change. Other knife makers and even manufacturers are starting to get on board with the photographic resolution, understanding that people who purchase knives, particularly expensive knives, want as much information as possible about their purchase. Those factories better be careful though, as large photos and enlargements are bound to illustrate poor finishes, bad fit, lousy design, and inferior accessories as well!

One of the greatest breakthroughs in the past couple of years is the HD (High Definition) monitor. These are big, bold, and strikingly beautiful displays, but (of course) they are only operable typically on the newer 64 bit systems with large processors with dedicated video cards. We'll see these more and more, but please, if you possibly can, upgrade your system to an HD monitor! The color, the intensity, the resolution and the image clarity will be worth it, I promise. If you really want to examine the knives on this very site in the best possible way, a High Definition monitor is the only way to go. You'll ask yourself why you took so long to upgrade; I know I did!

From my Business of Knifemaking Page

Universal and traditional web site design considers the lowest common denominator first. Web site professionals who design sites for a living regularly recommend that web sites are constructed for the smallest, narrowest, slowest, and oldest computer, host, browser, and user known. This is like in third grade, where we painstakingly suffered while the slowest kid struggled with every word when asked to read aloud for the class. Look, I feel for the need for the child to learn, but he deserves individual time and dedicated tutoring, and not by punishing the rest of the class into torturous boredom; that won't help him a bit!

Web development is kind of like that. Most developers (like some teachers) do not have any real world sales experience, much less business development experience. This web site (like most that have the ".com" generic top level domain) signifies a company, and in this case a company means a business. My business caters to serious knife buyers, collectors, and users, not to students, researchers, or guys that are using a cell phone to surf the internet for cool pics for their MySpace page. I use large photographs, knowing that my clients are using monitors over 1200 pixels wide. It's not that I don't care if you're using a smaller monitor, I care about showing the knives and artwork in the highest detail. Since the internet only displays at 72 dots per inch, this means big, and sometimes wide, photographs are necessary. If I'm going to drop $1k, $3k, or $10k on a fine custom, handmade, or combat tactical knife, I want to see every detail. Contrast this method with knife factories, who traditionally offer a final photograph only 2.5" wide on your screen, and you'll wonder what they are hiding.

Though I'm currently going through a website upgrade to make the site current and compliant with code and W3C recommendations, I'm not going to smaller images. In fact, I'm enlarging most of them to display more detail, resolution, and size. Site data, tables, text, and arrangements will flow and resize better after the upgrade, so thanks for your patience while I move through this tedious process. I think you'll agree that it's worth it.