Comments on: Photographer Website Design

By: Header Creator

Header Creator — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:33:56 +0000

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.

By: web design

web design — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:26:10 +0000

Hello!I got the most reliable knowledge about website is a set of information about a finicky topic. Conniving a website is defined as the pact and conception of web pages that in twirl make up a website.Thank you!

By: fred

fred — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 18:17:56 +0000

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.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:36:38 +0000

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.

By: Andy H.

Andy H. — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:34:47 +0000

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.

By: Michael Durham

Michael Durham — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:55:22 +0000

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

By: Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:31:58 +0000

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.

By: Boogle

Boogle — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:56:52 +0000

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.

By: Blake Discher

Blake Discher — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:17:32 +0000

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

By: Jimmie

Jimmie — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:05:55 +0000

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.