Thanks. I am tweaking the experience as to not have the UI in the way. I see some of that as well.
Where is the slowness you have? The pics loading, or the hover reacting? I don't have any.. except when previewing the hovered sites and waiting for them to load.
Actually, the page loading is pretty good. The important thing about that is you show a loading icon, so I know to wait a bit.
Some of the slowness seems to be the initial loading, because the responsiveness improves after the first visit. Since the background images seem to mostly be eye-candy, you might want to think about removing them. They also make your first visit to the site more confusing (in my opinion).
I also see some slowness in the hover and zooming, and that seems to stick around so I don't think it is a loading issue. You might want to reconsider the amount of animation that is done by the hovering; I already know where my mouse is, and some of the actions seem to simply highlight that.
I hope this helps, and thanks for putting your stuff up for us to play with.
I would agree in some cases. I only said you don't use click to navigate because I didn't understand what your issue was. You can click out anywhere... On the title, the nav bar, or the web links. That will open in a new tab. Would that address the speed/clicking usability.?