Final: Obstacles and Response, Technical and Artistic Concerns

Some issues needing to be addressed became apparent fairly early on in the website design. I realized I might need more pictures of individual body parts or areas, especially if the audio going along with the images was of any significant length, which brought up the challenge in some cases of how many different ways can I photograph particular things.
As is nearly always an issue when using image maps, I had to think about whether the audience could intuitively navigate through the site's maps or whether more direction was needed. I think to a degree navigating image maps is intuitive to most computer-users, but to be safe I included both the mouseover caption/titles and indicated in my introduction of the piece that investigation, finding the links, would be required to explore and navigate the portraits. I considered looking for a code which highlights image map areas when you mouseover them, but most I found were more suited to image maps of actual maps of continents with individual countries and such. I thought this effect would be too jarring with the organic shapes of the body.
I also had issue obtaining a better quality microphone for audio capturing. In the end, I decided it would be easier for me to use my laptop's microphone and edit the audio to the best of my ability rather than try to call in my subjects for multiple sittings. I was aware of the awkwardness of doing the photo shoot and the audio captures for me, so I tried to gather all the material from each person in a single meeting with them.
I wished to use essentially a slideshow for the photography that went with the audio, and while I originally started out using simple jQuery fade ins and outs, it became apparent working that script for multiple consecutive photographs would be too much of a hassle. I eventually found a fairly simple Javascript which allowed me to easily create simple slideshows, altering the timing as necessary. As timing was also an issue, I encouraged my subjects to keep their audio captures brief (I believe the longest is two minutes, for which I had to take more images), and generally took more photos than necessary so I had sufficient material to work with the timing of the audio tracks.
I also encountered some more editorial concerns, particularly with regards to what parts of my subjects' narratives I showed. In the case of one of my subjects who had an overabundance of scars in particular, I worked with a sampling of those rather than capturing them all. In some cases, the scars were very difficult to see, and I felt just shooting the general area with the physical evidence of the story so faint wasn't appropriate where simply a story generally concerning a body area or part might have been. I was aware of how this would alter the truth of the personal narratives, which is partly why I was so keen on the subjects coming up with what to say on their own. I knew I was playing a major role in portraying them (although most seemed to expect as much from me as the photographer).
Something I might have worked on more besides gathering a more complete narrative from subjects and find subjects from a wider range of ages, was on experimenting more with composition and lighting with the close-up shots. Certain areas were very challenging for finding different views or perspectives.