So, the other day I cranked through 145 websites in about 3 hours for the consultation demo and then I had a conversation with a magazine art director friend about how we look at photographers websites in obviously different ways (design vs. photo) and I realized something: Design and layout has a powerful effect on me. Right off the bat, before I even look at the first picture, the design is working on my brain.
So, here’s the nut, I’ve looked at tens-of-thousands of websites and it’s very apparent that certain photographers (of a similar feather) hang together. If you’ve got a Travel & Leisure design happening like so many of the photographers that T&L assigns then I’m already putting you into that category. Take it one step further, if I’m the Photography Director at T&L I’m used to seeing photography surrounded by a specific type of design so if the photographs you present me already look like they belong in my magazine… voila, one hurdle down 99 to go.
My proof:
Either that or the Arizona sun has completely baked my brain. Either way it’s all good.
42 Comments
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Rob! So what you’re telling me is that if I want to compete with Mr. Big T&L shooter I’d be better off creating a derivative design for my website?
Uhhhh – Call me – we need to talk.
On most of these sites, it took me 4-5 clicks just to see some photos… This isn’t functional design, it’s getting in the way of the content.
Why do they need links like “portfolio one” and “porfolio two” inside a section that’s already called portraits? If these are separate sets, then call them “street people”, or “butchers in my area” It doesn’t make sense from a design perspective, and it’s cumbersome to navigate”
These sites were are not about the photographer and their work, but about a designer in the candy store.
runs in line with the theory that people like what they know. being a bit over the edge is okay, but do as they like, dont make them “ike”.
some of those sites have an impractical interface for me, like counting 5 clicks through menue options till the first image can be seen or presenting us a long flash loading counter after we had to allow javascripts to see anything at all or close to none content at all, so which part of the design is appealing to you?
I’m neither a photographer photo editor nor web designer but doesn’t a photographer’s website, that takes three clicks to show a single photograph, miss the mark?
Sure seems that the “side scroll” design is the norm. Cant say that I like it much. Would you guys say that the days of the thumbnail gallery is over? or?
I only looked at the first three, but they didn’t look any more similar to each other than most photographers do. In fact the first three were probably more different than most other photographers are. None of the first three had the typical Livebooks design.
There seems to be a theme with all of these whereby I have to click on their name to enter them, why?
I know this was huge in 1996, but surely we have moved on from having the user click into the site like they are opening the door to a shop?
I’m in the process of redesigning my own site. So, examples of other photog sites are of great interest.
One of the things I’ve noticed about these sites is the heavy reliance on Flash. While it offers some bells and whistles that Plain Old Web Pages don’t, Flash isn’t high on the menu of what search engines wish to “see.”
More on this topic at:
http://www.professionalphotography101.com/photography/yourwebsite.html
Key quote from the above page:
“Search engines hate Flash. Flash is a movie file and search engines can’t see into the flash movie to read their much beloved copy. If your page is flash, you might as will cut your wrists right now. Ok, maybe that isn’t necessary, but don’t count on ever [come up high] on the engines. You can add the title, keywords, and description fields to the flash site, but you can’t add the copy that some of the engines look for.”
I agree with most of the comments of most that posted here…
1. The usability of these sites is pretty sub-standard, and I think that it is pretty crucial that design and usability go hand in hand. Otherwise your website will start to look and behave like a microsoft application. I think we can all agree that is something to be avoided. 4 clicks is far to many to get what you really came for, photos!
2. Flash is indeed unread by search engines (though if your designer/developer is smart they can add code to the source “around” the flash for, at least, some results).
3. Thanks for the links Rob, it’s always nice to see new things. I too am re-doing my site at the moment and examples of others (good and bad) are always helpful.
last website link is broken, the correct one is:
httphttp://www.andreafazzari.com/
thread grab alert. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with these guys as a livebooks substitute?
http://foliolink.com/
The price is significantly better and I like the look quite a bit. I’m close to pulling the ol’ trigger on one in the next month.
To bring it back to the discussion…it seems they give you a flash site but a companion html site, so you get the best of both worlds.
I’m actually thinking of doing a really avant garde site. It’s just going to be my name, no pictures, and you just keep clicking and clicking, and my name gets bigger and bigger, and then eventually your computer melts. It’s going to be really big.
Rob feel free to delete this post for any number of reasons.
Other than the John Huba website, all these take too many steps to get to the content. Maybe magazine editors have more time than other creatives, but for an AD or anyone else at an ad agency, they are eating up enough time to cause a negative feeling.
Busy people want content quick and with minimal effort. If you are so well known, published regularly in Lürzer’s, or featured in CommArts, then your website can probably be anything you want it to be. Those lesser of us need to be more accommodating.
Flash can be done clean and simple. However, if it really is a clean and simple design, why not have the designer use HTML? At what point is the interface design more important than the images? . . . . I think never.
@11 – yeah, I’ve seen a few folks I know and respect use those guys. I have no opinion about which is better though.
http://christopherwilsonphotography.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=7931&Akey=MNEGM7X3
This one is a foliolink
@ 6. Kevin: They all have juxtaposed photographs like a T&L layout would. Every single photographer has it. There are other subtle details in the photo selection and design elements. The click on my name thing may be part of it as well.
The usability problem seems to not effect these people. They’re all top travel photographers.
The flash vs. google problem is not an issue since I google’d all of them to get the links and for the most part they all came out on top.
Also, is it my imagination or does flash render photographs better. I’ve alway preferred looking at websites in flash.
I’m glad that a lot of the comments addressed the Flash vs. HTML issue. While Flash is, well, flashy, it really provides nothing in the way of useful content. When it first hit the Web, developers and designer didn’t really know how to use it and it seems we haven’t made much progress. My thinking is that good design can be static and by using plain ol’ HTML you get the benefits of a stable site, excellent SEO options and no loading problems.
After first building my site with a Flash interface I got so many emails saying that they had issues, their browser wouldn’t load it (Explorer) the link would just show up broken, etc. I scrapped the whole thing and redesigned it in HTML and guess what? It’s actually better looking and way easier to update.
A big Thanks to you, Rob for providing the invaluable info within this blog. It’s a must see in my daily RSS.
i use a high resolution monitor, so i like images to be LARGE to not look like postage stamps.
this brings the problem of aspect ratio and being limited by monitor height – since i (and most others) typically use my monitor in the landscape position, designs like the above favor landscape images, making them larger than portrait orientation since they kept a constant height throughout. guess that’s okay if targeting a magazine p.e. since a magazine has the same limitation/ feature – although folks seem to be okay w/ turning some magazine pages 90 degrees to address the orientation issue (playboy) ;-)
would be interested in seeing some web designs that you like where they kept the image size (area) identical between images (square images doesn’t count) ;-)
It’s all a trade-off. Aiming at high res screen users is fine until those numerous buyers who use 15 in. laptops can’t view your site without scrolling.
@12 Gordon is of like mind. I err on the side of speed so as not to loose the audience. It would probably make sense to give an option to launch an new window with a full screen image but to force a long load time is risky.
Some of the web-sites shown are so outdated that they are becoming unique and quite special. It almost makes them stand out where the flash sites starting to blend too much.
I think it doesn’t even matter how good your site is if you’re an established photographer. But for emerging photographers a good site is a sales tool, just like a gallery in a popular part of town it will help you sell if it’s easy to find the work.
2ROB: I think the reason why you like photos in flash so much more is because of their appearance, such as animation and smoothness that adds some life to it, while HTML is very still, where images are on the walls and there is almost no interaction.
As a photo editor for a national magazine and a photographer, I’ve come to appreciate simplicity when looking at websites. If I can keep my mouse in one spot and just keep clicking to move from image to image, I’m happy. I employ a Livebooks site for my own work and while it is somewhat generic, it’s easy to use and is basically the black leather portfolio book of the web.
In response to comment #15 regarding the rendering of photos in HTML vs. Flash,
Most browsers do not manage color (Safari on Mac being a notable exception), subsequently they ignore embedded ICC profiles, resulting in photos that tend to look “washed out,” especially in the reds and yellows. Flash, on the other hand, does manage color and honors embedded profiles, resulting in photos being accurately rendered within the .swf. This is one case where the encapsulated nature of flash files turns out to be an advantage.
While the sites designs are similar the images are even more similar, I think it would be easy to rearrange photos from all the sites put up there and nobody would now the difference. I think maybe the reason they are popular is because they work with in the current standard of good but not great photography. No envelopes are being pushed here just nice images. I suppose that’s fine for the T&L crowd, but it would be nice to see them taking some chances.
i agree w/Terence @ 20. speed and ease are the most important. and not sure if i’m the only one here but when i’m looking at photo sites – the most important thing is the image. so, i get frustrated when all the bells and whistles overshadow why i’m even looking at your site. i’d agree that keeping the design simple and in the direction of the work/market you’re wanting is a good idea – as long as your work is the focus. NOT the design.
What does this say about Jason Fulford’s chances of getting a job for T&L then?
hey rob. what’s up?
quick question on this subject.
for yourself and/or with conversations with other art buyers, would you say that a slower website just kills the mood? slower being a long loading, flash site. (unless they are a major player in the industry or you are somewhat familiar with their work) Or will you actually wait because it’s more important (for you) to check out the images?
i know there are a lot of factors involved – i usually won’t wait, but as a photographer, my interest obviously differs from yours. curious to hear the busy PE’s point of view is on this.
thanks yo.
justin
jeremycowart.com — solves the 4~5 click issues; photos load right away
brook-pifer.com — solves the resolution problem by loading large images filling the browser window in width/height with Flash; adds to load time, also note the lack of vertical images
martin morrell.com WEBSITE COMING SOON
And this is a great site?
I like your eye for good work, but you must be blind…
The Bitter Photographer strikes again :-
http://bitterphotographer.blogspot.com/2008/01/new-consulting-businesslegal-defense.html
@26
Cowart – Always one of my favorites
Pifer – extra double annoying.
Is it April already ???
Thanks for the website links. I’m always thrilled to check out new photographers… and I’ve always wondered who was responsible for the excellent JCrew covers. Now I know (Hugh Stewart).
Something I’ve always longed for and love is when the site can read what size monitor your viewing it from and resize the images accordingly. Everything else just seems small in comparison. Jill Greenberg’s site, http://www.manipulator.com does this quite successfully, despite other navigation issues. Surprisingly, I haven’t found any other designer who knows how to do this with any ease or affordability.
I guess my question is if enlarging the images to a size that is not easily viewable on a laptop is a bad idea? I hate the way having to scroll to see the full image looks and feels on a laptop, but I also hate the way small images look on a huge screen.
I don’t think it’s any secret that “Design .. has a powerful effect ..” It’s something that apple understands quite well. Just look at iPod popularity. Perception trumps all.
I have Flash on my site and it comes up number one in the organic search results for “Detroit Photographer.” It’s a result of additional body copy and a lot of other factors. AFAIK, LiveBooks is the only company doing sites for photographers that understands SEO (Search Engine Optimization). They’re doing a clever workaround for their Flash sites to enable them to be “crawled” by spiders. Disclosure: They sponsored my talk at PhotoExpo in NYC this past fall about SEO. But what they’re doing works.
You can have Flash AND rank high in the search engines. FWIW, my site is not a LiveBooks site.
Cheers,
Blake Discher
http://www.fireflystudios.com
http://www.go-seo.com
I think, to zoom out to the bigger picture, I think everyone needs to look themselves in the mirror, and say, “Hey, if my ability to get work is dependent on a Search Engine, maybe my pictures aren’t good enough”.
The only reason I’d want a Search Engine is if somebody just remembered maybe my last name, and they Googled that with the word “photographer”, or something. But if the success of your business is predicated on “people photographer, New York City”, (probably producing ten thousand results), you’ve got some much larger issues in setting your work apart from the masses.
I’ve never understood the whole fear of Search Engines thing.
Blake @33, I think the big difference between your site and a typical Livebooks site is that your site is an html site with an embedded Flash portfolio, whereas Live books is plain old Flash. With all of the text you have on your site, you can do a much better job of optimizing for search engines.
A Flash site can, obviously, obtain good search engine rankings as well, but it becomes much more important to get good links to your site, as you typically can’t have any part of an actual Flash movie crawled by search engine spiders, thereby making keywording, and other methods useless.
Boogle @34, I wouldn’t care how my clients found me, as long as they find me, and they’re the clients I’m looking for. If I get a client through a search engine, it’s no more inherently worse, or better, then one I get from an email blast, or referral, or anything else.
Many photographers couldn’t care less about search engine rankings, as they don’t get their clients through search engine placement, while others rely fairly heavily on search engine listings.
Different businesses have different needs, and if something works for someone, I’m not going to knock it.
Perhaps I am getting old and curmudgeonly, but I have always thought that most flash presentations were too slick (and slow) and not user friendly enough. So Rob’s love of flash presentation is good to hear – it gives me an opportunity to shed my bias and reconsider my thoughts on the concept.
However, I know that most of my clients don’t want to wade through pages of loading flash to find what they are looking for. On the other hand, I must admit that Photoshelter Personal Archive leaves a great deal to be desired in the presentation department – especially when I want to share new story packages with editors.
Boogle@34 – When considering Search Engine Optimization, it can matter a lot to those of us who make our living through stock image sales – especially if we have unique specialties. (Dan Heller has some excellent analysis on the subject). So far, the only major drawback to good placement is the weekly “I want to take pictures like you – please explain your technique” email.
http://www.durmphoto.com
And what effect does great website design have when a mediocre image (subjective) is surrounded by all the slick grandeur and graphic elegance?
I think I can guess.
Blake@33 One can have an excellent website, seo, be ranked number 1, 2, or 10 in the search results, but the bottom line is….are you getting any work. You can talk the talk, but you don’t walk the walk.
I teach web design, I actually copied the URL to this page as an example of really terrible web sites, photographers who, rather than showing their work, end up showing off clumsy flash apps.
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There are some really good photographers out there. Pity if some of them have to rely on the search engines for work though. One would think that if you are good enough people will come look for you not vice versa.
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