Silk Road Lodge panoramas
Graphic representation of Reception at the Silk Road Lodge as used on our website
Over the years, I have faced a certain amount of controversy concerning out various websites … for example: why do we have so many?; should we have special custom designed sites or make use of site engines such as WordPress? … and so on.
Interestingly, the site that has caused me the most controversy was the one for hotel in Bishkek: the Silk Road Lodge.
When we designed the site, we faced a particular problem – photographs. We had difficulty in trying to decide which photographs to use. It wasn’t that we didn’t have any, we had lots of them and were somewhat embarrassed by the choice … and then again, we could always have engaged a photographer to take some especially for the site. The problem was deciding exactly what image or concept we wanted to convey.
When it came to the external views of the hotel it was difficult to get sufficient distance away to encompass the whole building without also including a lot of additional extraneous space if we were to get the right sort of size for use on a webpage. On top of that, there was a question about what season to feature … because the hotel looks different at various times of the year, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.
Likewise, getting the right vantage point to photograph the interior spaces was also difficult. Many of the photographs seemed to emphasise just a small area of the room. We could get over this by using a wide angle lens, but the pictures then seems to be distorted.
Photographs are sometimes, colloquially, called “snaps” – and that is exactly what they are … “snapshots” presenting an image which is “frozen in time” … so the attractive pictures of the building surrounded by roses are great if the guest is visiting us in the late spring/early summer when the roses are in bloom, but at other times of the year it would be simple for someone to feel that the picture created a false impression, (a “dishonest” impression), and snow covered scenes, no matter how appealing, are not in keeping with the situation that most our guests will experience. With photographs of the interior … the layout and décor may change from time to time as renovations are undertaken … Consider the following set of photographs of the reception taken over the course of the last few years:
In the end, in discussion with the web designer, we decided on the option of using graphics … based on actual photographs but an artists impression just the same. This had the advantage that we could use the same style on different pages throughout the site …
To be honest, I had some doubts with the approach – but went with the advice of my marketing manager and the web designer.
Needless to say, not everyone agreed with this decision and I took a certain amount of criticism for it.
Well, we’ve recently completed some renovations and took the opportunity to ask Victor Rehemeyer to come and take some of his Spherical Panoramas which we are going to add to the site. We already have some which he took earlier and you can see on our site see.kg. To give you an idea … here is the one he took recently of the Reception area … It requires flash to be installed … and it should rotate automatically, but if it stops rotating then click on the picture with the left mouse button and holding the button down move the mouse right or left, forward of backwards, to rotate the view.
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Like photographs, they still present a “snapshot” in time – but, hopefully, they give a better impression of the overall space.
Bishkek