Big Picture (Boston Globe)

Navigation
The main navigation is just scrolling through the different posts, since each post has multiple links to the full post itself. There is also an archive finder via month and year, which I wish could be more prominent. Likewise, the most recent posts are listed as bullets below the archive menu, which are also not obvious enough. There is a link to the text blog section of the site, labeled as "Big Picture Notes"

Architecture

The architecture is fairly flat. The homepage links to the various entries, with links to "yahoo buzz" and "share this". There's a toggle to see all comments, but otherwise no real sublevels. 

Content/Typography

The content i.e. photos are displayed clearly and prominently. Each photo and its caption share a black background box, linking them effectively. The text that is there (captions and an introduction) looks good. Most text is in a comfortable serif, and captions are in a white on black sans serif (they could be made a little bigger though). The comments in particular are presented very cleanly and made very legible. 

Grid/structure

The structure is very linear: pictures are stacked on top of one another. The j/k key shortcuts for navigation are very effective, though the instructions to use it should be made more prominent. 

Iconography/imagery

There's very little iconography, for things like comments and email to a friend, and mostly subtle. The only issue is that the comments icon resembles a thumbs down as well as a speech bubble. The site revolves around images, and definitely keeps all the attention on them by increasing the size as much as possible while accommodating smaller monitors, and reducing other imagery (ads are before and after the actual photos). 

Color Palette

The colour palette is quite minimalist. Links are blue, and everything is black or grey. With the large photo sizes though, there's no need to add extra colour. 

Site Focus
This site aims to present interesting photos in an elegant way. It is built in a photoblog structure, where each post presents a series of photos, which I find to be an elegant, "no-frills" approach. 

Link