Web Sites

I built mine myself. I wouldn't want to use a template someone else uses. I'm an artist; I think if you're a creator then it looks VERY bad to use someone else's template to generate a site that looks like 500 other people's sites. There is nothing wrong with hiring a professional web designer to do your site, as long as you get an original design. Web design is technically complex, and some people haven't the time or desire to learn it, so you don't have to do it yourself. But its nice if you do!

A good website needs a good navigation system with the main menu choices available on every page. That way someone hasn't got to click the BACK button 500 times to find the home page or the contact form page.

Contacting you should be easy. One of the menu button on every page should link to the contact info page, with a form they can fill out to contact you online and other info like phone number or mailing address if you want that..but email is essential.

Images should be layed out in categorries that describe the projects you work on. Don't put 900 photos all on one page, especially if they are totally unrelated to each other, and make the thumbnails big enough to see. Link the thumbs to decent sized images and make sure the photos look good without too much compression or sharpening.
 
I use SmugMug, I'm surprised no one else does. I needed a way to upload tons of images that could be ordered through the site without doing the fullfillment myself. The site is highly customizable and the support forum, dGrin is excellent.
 
pellothed1 said:
I use SmugMug, I'm surprised no one else does. I needed a way to upload tons of images that could be ordered through the site without doing the fullfillment myself. The site is highly customizable and the support forum, dGrin is excellent.
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I don't for 3 reasons. One, I'm an artist, so I am expected to make my own prints and wouldn't ever sign my name to a print ordered from a photo lab.

Two, my commercial clients virtually never want prints; they want digital files to give their ad agencies or graphic design people so they can use them in ads. So, Smugmug's lab services aren't of any use to me there either.

Three, I think using sites like Smugmug, PBase, and Flickr shows laziness in a professional photographer. If you're doing this professionally, I feel you need a site with your name on the site and your name (or business name) in the URL. And it looks bad for a creative person to be using a generic design.
 
Did you look at my smugmug site? Given it says "powered by smugmug" at the bottom, but I don't see a problem in this any more than other sites I've seen with similar text. I use smugmug because I sell, literally, thousands of prints a year from weddings. I don't sign them individually, and somehow doubt that any wedding photographer signs their wedding or portrait prints individually. I've spent quite a bit of time customizing that site with CSS, JAVA, HTML code to differentiate it from a standard template. Just because I'm using SmugMug doesn't mean that I'm not an artist as well, you seem to insinuate the opposite. You also call me lazy because my site doesn't have my name on it? Obviously you didn't look at my smugmug site, which has it's own branding including custom URL. I think your making generalizations without doing proper research. SmugMug is significantly above and beyond PBase and especially Flickr.
 
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I happily use a redirect to Pbase

I happily use a redirect to Pbase

because I designed and maintained my own pages for years (as well as doing the coding and designing for many other people's pages) and don't find it that much fun any more. In fact, it's tedious. And, I get plenty of work with my pitiful, lazy, site....I just finished a big commercial job and do plenty of gallery sales.
The only time I've considered moving off Pbase is when the site goes through its occasional meltdowns. That Smugmug site of yours, pellothed1, looks really good.

As for you, Chris...your smug attitude and judgementalism isn't going to get you very far, so I'd rethink your know-it-all-ness.
 
imajypsee said:
As for you, Chris...your smug attitude and judgementalism isn't going to get you very far, so I'd rethink your know-it-all-ness.
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HILARIOUS!

You judge me and tell me I won't get far in life because I'm "Judgemental" and you don't even have the courage to sign your name.

My comments about smugmug, pbase, etc. were in response to Tony asking why no one mentioned Smugmug. He asked a question and I answered him. What I told him is the truth about why I do not use Smugmug. That doesn't mean I'm right, but the way I do things and the reason I do them works for the kind of work I do. It wasn't meant as a personal attack...its simply how I feel about the way a photographer should present his/her work.

After seeing Tony's response I did go look at his website (which I had not done before). I have never seen anyone do that with Smugmug before, and his site looks beautiful. Every other Smugmug site I've run across had the default Smugmug layout and Smugmug's URL....which I still think looks amateurish. Having seen what Tony did with it, I'd consider doing it myself (using my layout like he did with his to sell on Smugmug) if I did weddings or some other kind of photography where people buy commercially made prints.
 
It seems that the discussion is primarily focussed on websites that showcase groups of photographs in separate galleries. I'm not saying that I do not like these types of personal websites but that I also like the photo-blog type website that features a photo-of-the-week or something along those lines. I also really like websites that have photo-stories rather than or in addition to galleries. In this regard, I find the Magnum website really good. I keep visiting often just to see the photo-stories (or photo-essays as they call them). I also downloaded all their photo-podcasts and put them on my Palm PDA. Whenever, I need some inspiration or when I'm bored, I whip out my PDA and play their pod-casts. I downloaded all of Brooks Jensen's 400+ pod-casts off the Lenswork website too and put them on my Palm - they're audio only but very good.

Personally, I don't have a website yet. Being an amateur, I'm not sure if I would even put my photos on my personal website as I don't intend to sell anything. I share my photographs on flickr. I primarily use flickr because I get a lot of inspiration from other photographers that are on there too. Every day I visit flickr and play a slideshow of the latest photos posted by members on my contact list. This gets me pumped up about going out and taking photographs.

In fact, getting myself inspired is the reason why I also visit personal websites of pro and amateur photographers. I'm never looking to hire a photographer or buy prints (though I have purchased some photography books off personal websites). I primarily just want to see some nice photographs - get some new ideas, and to motivate myself.

BTW, I don't mind the postage stamps. I just hate it when an original rectangular photograph is cropped into a square for the thumbnail. I find it is often a really bad representation of the actual image. On the rare occasion, I find the square thumbnail interesting and the actual rectugular image a bit bland. Flickr crops images to a square thumbnail automatically and as far as I know, doesn't allow for the photographer to choose how the image should be cropped into the square. It is a really big pet peave I have with flickr.
 
www.elanphotos.com

I try to keep things simple and consistent. To me that means easy navigation and consistent art direction that doesn't overwhelm the content. My site could certainly use some work, but I think I'm heading in the right direction. The big problem of course is that I'm not an expert in any of the software used to build sites. So, I'm a little limited as to how fancy I can make things (which may be a good thing...).

I used Soundslides and Dreamweaver to build my site. Recently I expanded into Logic Express 8 and Final Cut Pro for audio slideshows. I use Fetch for uploading everything.

Soundslides is great. It is cheap and very simple to use. It would be nice if a future version had more extensive timeline controls. But for the money, it works like a charm.

I believe that these days sound is an important part of presenting your work. A few weeks ago I bought a Zoom H2 digital audio recorder. The recording quality of this little unit is excellent. It has FOUR microphones so you record 2 channel stereo or even 4 channel 'surround' stereo. With a little effort you can mix these 4 tracks into actual 5.1 surround sound.

http://tinyurl.com/33c435

Now, when I go to an event or location I take a few minutes and grab some audio. Later I can mix everything on my Mac and sync it to the slides with Logic Express and Final Cut Pro.

I'm currently working on a long term personal project, so a lot of these ideas about sound aren't currently implemented on the site. But I'm working on it... 😉

My big problem is bandwidth. My provider will shut me down once I hit a certain amount of data transfered. To up the limit I need to pay more. I've never had this problem, but as my site grows in size, it may be an issue down the road. Blogs are better in this sense; as far as I know they do not suffer from this limitation.


HL
 
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Nando said:
Harry,

I really like your website.



I think that photoblogs can result in more repeat-visitors. I tend to visit photo blog websites more often just to see if there are updates. I've been visiting the following website regularly in the hopes of seeing new material even though there hasn't been an update for two years.

http://www.takaakiokada.net/log_03/
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WOW thanks for the link Nando! It was through that website that i rediscovered a blogger that I'd "lost" 2-years ago. I use to follow his blog but lost his name and link when my laptop was stolen. Thanks!

by the way that blog is http://uwaa.org/ (it's in Japanese, if you can't read it just enjoy his style)
 
Tony E - that is a great site from SmugMug. I'm late to the game on this thread but it looks like there are ways to allow for personal fulfillment of "hand printed" materials as well which would make SmugMug pretty good for all around presentation and e-commerce.

Thanks for the tips.
 
I run my own server (FreeBSD w/Apache, PHP, MySQL) and use Wordpress with a few customizations for my two photo blogs, http://2038.cc and http://x.unix.se.

I want as little as possible to get in the way of the photos, I hate Flash with a passion and I believe that relatively high-res photos make for greater impact. Around 1000 pixels wide seems appropriate for me at the moment. (Unfortunately I started 2038.cc before coming to this realization, so they're smaller, and me being pedantic in matters of uniformity, I can't change them now..)

I've toyed with idea of uploading each photo in several sizes and then have a javascript try to figure out the visitor's resolution and show the right version of the photo, so it takes up as much space on the screen as possible, just within the limits.

I was very much inspired by the Japanese photographer shikuro mentions, more specifically his site http://www.yamasakiko-ji.com/. It just blows me away.
 
Great websites/photoblogs everyone.

I also use Wordpress for my photoblog and have been itching to redesign it soon. I'm pretty much self taught in code/website design so I'm fearful to change something now that I've been using the template/theme I created on my own. I'm also lazy.

andersju - I like the very simple design of your photoblog and was wondering if you created your own template/theme?

My photoblog: http://www.alapan.com/blog

Input appreciated 🙂
 
gregg said:
Tony E - that is a great site from SmugMug. I'm late to the game on this thread but it looks like there are ways to allow for personal fulfillment of "hand printed" materials as well which would make SmugMug pretty good for all around presentation and e-commerce.

Thanks for the tips.
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Thanks Gregg. SmugMug allows comments below each photo (such as the black print below the photos in the Personal gallery that shows where each picture was taken), you can add html code into that container that would allow PayPal or Google Checkout buttons (by using the button builder html generators on their respective sites). I don't currently have any pictures that I've done that way, but it's easy and I've done it in the past with some success. Google Checkout is free (PayPal takes their standard fee) and allows multiple options through drop down menus, so I prefer it. That is the easiest way to do self-fullfilment, not something for weddings or the like, but for pictures that I print myself.

Prior to starting my own business I ran the custom printing lab of a large photo company and saw them spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to accomplish what I can do through SmugMug for $100/year. Given they don't have to upload their pictures, they just drop them onto their servers, but I still think the SmugMug ordering side of things looks significantly better. I do wish that I could customize the look of the backside of things, and remove SmugMug's branding completely, but I'm willing to live with it considering what it would cost to build something similar. Keep in mind, I have to be able to upload thousands of photos during the course of a week during wedding season and have some way to fullfill the orders (something I couldn't do myself). The only other real choices are galleries offered by individual labs, but they offer very little customization.

Also, and not that I'm trying to talk anybody into using SmugMug, but they have a journal style gallery (I use them in the Wedding and Portrait information sections of my site) that would allow one to create a photoblog with comments. The two journal galleries on my site are formated using HTML, but the standard layout is a large picture in the center with the comments below. This would also allow you to add Google Checkout buttons below your photoblog pictures in the event someone wanted one and you didn't want the run of the mill prints from SmugMug.
 
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agi: I did (much inspired by Yamasaki), but it's really not much of a theme 🙂 If you want the code, just PM me your email address. I like your blog - elegant, and the photos are very nice; I'll be back.
 
andersju said:
agi: I did (much inspired by Yamasaki), but it's really not much of a theme 🙂 If you want the code, just PM me your email address. I like your blog - elegant, and the photos are very nice; I'll be back.
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Hi Anders, you website is fantastic, simple. I like Yamasakiko's website, but am clueless when it comes to codes and programming.
I sent you PM as well.



thanks
 
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I know nuts about making a website but am keen to set up one just to share my experiences on music and photography.

So I talked to the administrator of a Singapore headphone forum (www.sgheadphones.net, I am a regular of this forum). Coincidentally the administrator is keen in this type of work and she offers me to host with her. So I paid to get a domain name that I like, and paid a fee to the forum for some diskspace and help. I was given a template and I am quite happy with it so I started to add in articles.

I am given a website editor which is not so difficult to use for uploading articles and pictures. For galleries I asked her to install simple viewer.

When I work on my Mac at home the editor seems only work properly with firefox and not safari.

And that's about it.
 
Hi all,

I was reading all of the comments and discussions over websites. This is a good topic and could be www. directory for members.

I went to choose a ready template from foliolink for following reasons.

* I don't have knowledge of creating websites nor time to learn. Though I am not an artist so I don't mind to have same templates others have.
* I wanted to have full control on my website as I might need to add or remove picture any time, or making changes on texts.
* Having a good website is expensive and also every time I didn't want to ask for a help from a web designer.
* It is flash also visible on google....

Websites should also have following notices.
* Copyright notice
* Terms and Conditions
* And other useful informations you might find necessary.

If you don't have these details it ain't making sense to pro people but thieves.

In the end here is my WEBSITE

Best, Ali
 
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