Comments on: Portfolio Website Design

By: Ken Kaminesky

Ken Kaminesky — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:43:54 +0000

One of the best custom designed photographer sites that I have seen to date is:

http://www.nickonken.com

It must have cost a fortune though.

The designer who did my site…

http://www.kenkaminesky.com

has done a ton of photographer’s sites. He really has a talent for making the photos stand out with his simple, clean and classy style.

http://www.sbirchmore.com/

By: Leonard Aarons

Leonard Aarons — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:16:53 +0000

Any one tried http://www.ifp3.com

By: David

David — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:30:57 +0000

digitaltechparis

- Big images + simple navigation + clean layouts designed with photo buyers.
- Great SEO.
- Optional PhotoShelter customization.
- Wordpress blog installation.
- HTML email design.
- One-time payment & personal customer support

By: website design

website design — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:49:38 +0000

Google keyword tool provides good suggestions for getting keywords for your website!

By: Thom

Thom — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:03:13 +0000

@David, one reason I can think of is that Flash is color-managed.

By: Ready, Aim , Fire - RetouchPRO

Ready, Aim , Fire - RetouchPRO — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:35:16 +0000

[...] called A Photo editor and there was a page discussing all of the portfolio sites for photographers http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2008/01/…ebsite-design/ . I spoke to a number of people I knew and was looking at companies like Live books, Click book etc [...]

By: Jenifer

Jenifer — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:51:45 +0000

Another option for easy to use flash, flash and html, and blogsite (wordpress flash site hybrid sites) is portfoliositez.com

By: christian

christian — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:05:43 +0000

I used this blog as a great tool to choose a new web site company. I decided to go with a photoflio. I think their product is stupendous. price, features, interface, support. its fantastic. ill have my new site up soon, and dont regret going with them at all.

By: Raymond Patrick

Raymond Patrick — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 02:13:53 +0000

It’s a difficult thing to find a website template or company to design your website. I was with livebooks for years and just got bored with the box within a box (the computer screen) and extensivie scrolling. I also didn’t want to keep paying for little things like font changes or email links much less pay for adding portfolios.

I found foliolink, they have lot of template options and there was one that was nearly perfect for me. I went with them a month ago. You can just use the templates off the shelf and tweak the the XML code if you want to.

I got into the code which I knew nothing about and in 10 days my site was up and it looks almost exactly how I wanted for a very low price. The code is difficult at first, but once you learn a little about how it works, it’s very easy. I went with the Nairobi II template.

The result. My agents, my clients and potential clients and friends love it. The response has been overwhelming.

I imagine, I’ll get tired of how it looks and change to a different template and it will look new to me and to people who view my work. We live in a world where change is normal. Also in this business change is an expectation.

By: name

name — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:53:48 +0000

Beautiful site,

By: John Vaccaro

John Vaccaro — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:07:32 +0000

Juicyorange has templated sites available as well.

Some examples of websites using the Juicyorange Portfolio template include the following:
http://www.ewanburns.com
http://www.jasonlewisfurniture.com
http://www.iamrandyharris.com

By: desarrollo web

desarrollo web — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:09:13 +0000

How about free or open source software/templates? Why don’t you add those to your list?
http://www.movabletype.org
http://www.pixelpost.org/

A greeting.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:33:24 +0000

My portfolio website isn’t up yet but the website itself is finished and ready to use. I think it looks great and simple.

To recover some of the investment I am re-selling my own website for a low price.

See for yourself here:

flashphotoportfolio.com

By: Paul O'Mara

Paul O'Mara — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:16:58 +0000

In the DIY you may want to consider LRB Portfolio. It is a website within a gallery for Lightroom and for the price(10 euros) it cannot be beat. Very strong on SEO, large image display and easy to update and maintain. I’m into clean and simple so it works for me. Fortunately it seems to be a constant work-in-progress so updates happen and they are free. NFI.

By: On-line portfolio survey circa January ‘09 | byronbay-photography.com

On-line portfolio survey circa January ‘09 | byronbay-photography.com — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:44:50 +0000

[...] A Photo Editor – Portfolio Website Design (note the great discussion in the comments) [...]

By: June

June — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:47:34 +0000

I’m looking for a template that combines both a photography portfolio and video clips. I’m a photographer/cinematographer so I have both a stills portfolio and various demo reels. I couple of my criteria is easy to use, clean and professional looking, and hopefully not too expensive.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

By: Pat McHugh

Pat McHugh — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:41:56 +0000

Flash looks great….except it can be very slow. I like livebooks also but I have never had the patience to sit through a full site. It takes a while, but looks great. Html still seems to be the way to go, if you go with flash, make sure it moves quickly.

By: András Kalmár Nagy

András Kalmár Nagy — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:48:31 +0000

@Leo Kawczinski, your grasp of colour management seems to lack. Assigning AdobeRGB as a profile to the image can make it look washed out if it is displayed as an sRGB image in a browser. Assigning a monitor specific profile to an image is a really dumb idea.

By: On-line portfolio survey circa January

On-line portfolio survey circa January — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:56:49 +0000

[...] A Photo Editor – Portfolio Website Design (note the great discussion in the comments) Finally, here

By: Cameron Davidson

Cameron Davidson — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:28:36 +0000

Rob

Add Nadine Brown of Brand Envy/Lost-Luggage to your list.

She redid my site and is part of the team that branded the new Geographic Assignment division site/portfolios.

http://www.brandenvy.com
http://www.lost-luggage.com

I am very pleased with the designs and update she proposed for me plus bringing everything up to date and away from the dreaded Trajan.

Good person to work with.

By: Lacey Johnson

Lacey Johnson — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 03:01:44 +0000

Qufoto.com is a great template-based website to add to the list. It’s very similar to Livebooks, but much more affordable and also supports multimedia.

By: Brett G

Brett G — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:23:41 +0000

First, thank you Rob for an awesome site… very helpful for an upcoming photographer like myself.

I have been contemplating several of the sites suggested here for my website portfolio, but was wondering if Flash will be practically obsolete in a couple years. The reason is that Microsoft Silverlight is supposed to replace Flash. One of my close friends is a web designer and he practically always uses Silverlight rather than Flash. What do you all think? I really love Flash but I’m thinking Silverlight might be better. The links about Silverlight are below if you are unfamiliar with it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

Thank you for your feedback everyone,
Brett

By: Marc

Marc — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:43:44 +0000

Interesting post and comments! Very useful.

If you like flash to display images and galleries, I think the best option for flash templates is to “wrap” them within a robust content manager like WordPress. I do that frequently for my clients and their search ranking and traffic increases dramatically. Now matter how well someone works to “optimize” flash it never provides good results SEO compared to non-flash solutions. And yet the flash galleries are very appealing. So the best option is to combine both and replace the typical flash splash page and info pages with a blogsite.

Thanks again for a great post,
-Marc
http://www.ProPhotoBlogsite.com

By: The Photographic Portfolio « Beyond The Surface |

The Photographic Portfolio « Beyond The Surface | — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:15:43 +0000

[...] A Photo Editor has developed an extensive resource list on website portfolios. [...]

By: Ellen Rennard

Ellen Rennard — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:54:13 +0000

I need a website on the cheap. My daughter’s a web designer; she says html is better, and suggests iweb for a fast, easy solution. Nobody here has mentioned it, I am clueless, what do y’all think? I’m a fine art photog. with no plans to do anything commercial; I just need people to be able to see my work. I want something simple, clean, elegant. Help, por favor!

By: SAM

SAM — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 06:49:13 +0000

OK. Enough about which website….
let’s talk about contact management and database management programs…..oh and don’t forget invoice & accounting…what are some of your solutions?
samantha

By: rien

rien — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:36:18 +0000

@Paul McEvoy: http://www.viewbook.com is very much alive.

To contribute to the discussion: we choose to work with Flash galleries for http://viewbook.com, because it makes it very easy to embed your work in to any website (flash is easier to embed than html), even a custom website. People are very creative with this, see those websites for example:

http://wojtekgil.com
http://www.meireles.com/work/web.html
http://www.surivansornsen.com/webs/modeling.htm

Our portfolio pages are basic. The aim is to use them more as a ‘tool’; you can use it as your portfolio website, or when you’re working on a new website as a temporary solution, or to show selections of your work beside your website:

http://engelfoto.viewbook.com/
http://gabrielerosso.viewbook.com/

It is also possible to link to the individual galleries directly, to show a selection of your work to a potential client, or gallery:

http://engelfoto.viewbook.com/valley_of_fires_2006
(Great red filter photography by the way)

–Rien.

By: Web Developer

Web Developer — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:35:51 +0000

Why should not I look through professional photographers sites for inspiration?

By: Sara Elder

Sara Elder — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:06:36 +0000

Regarding the web site issue, here are my thoughts.

As a photo editor of multiple magazines, I look at photographers’ web sites every day. My pet peeves are intro movies, music, user-unfriendly navigation, not updating sites literally for years, photos that take seemingly forever to load, and not listing your geographical location. I’m constantly assigning shoots around the country, and I need to know where you are! To that end, I often look for photographers on PDN’s PhotoServe and ASMP’s Find a Photographer portals but pursue it only if there’s a web site listed. And on any site, I obviously have to see examples of the type of work I need to assign.

On the Flickr issue, if you want to use it in addition to your own web site, fine, but I wouldn’t have it as your primary site. Professionals need to have a more distinctive presence.

When you promote yourself, go to the effort to find out what type of photography a company uses so you aren’t sending fashion promos or web links to photo editors who assign only editorial portraits, for example. Your promo should include your web link, and be sure it’s active. If I like the promo, I’ll look up the web site and bookmark it.

Good luck!

By: Luke Copping

Luke Copping — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:17:48 +0000

Has anyone here had any experience with http://www.qufoto.com. The feel seems very similar to livebooks but at a fraction of the price. Not the best choice perhaps, but maybe an alternative for those of us on a tighter budget who are still looking for a good interface and user experience.