Looking for Good Examples of Photographers Websites

[bmac]

I'm in the planning stages for a much needed redesign of my website. It's been over two years since I put it up, and want to add a lot of new stuff to it. I've spent the last few days clicking around the web checking out photographers sites and have been really disapointed for the most part. It seams that a lot of photographers think they are web designers... most arent

What are your favorite photographer website? what do you like about them? What do you look for when going to a photographers website?

Brian

 

[TPPhotog]

Brian,

Well mines an example of how not to do it, but there are many members here who's sites I like.

The latest one I found was Neal's (Dead Link Removed). Good clean look, well labeled and easy to navigate and no broken links (always very annoying).

Tony

 

[Sjixxxy]

I happen to think that mine is pretty slick. (see link in signature) Even though one of the ways to navigate is currently out of order, but I doubt anyone notices.

 

[Donald Miller]

Brian,

I like Misha Gordin's and Jerry Uelsmann's sites.

 

[removed account4]

mark tucker's is one of the nicest i have seen
Dead Link Removed

 

[mark]

I like

http://www.billatkinson.com/Homepage.pl
and
Dead Link Removed

They are easy to navigate and I would go so far as to say elegant (as much as a website can be called elegant.)

 

[Jorge]

What do you look for when going to a photographers website?

Brian

Well hard for me to say what I like, but I will tell you what I dont like....flash media, blogs, cute graphics jumping all around, small thumbnails, opening a new page to see the pic from the thumbnail ( I specially hate this one, what PITA!), overly done graphics like frames, shadows, weird colors.

Here are some I like with some comments:

http://www.marioabbatepaolo.com/ this one has thumbnails too small for my taste, as well as the pics, but overall design is elegant and simple.

http://www.garyauerbach.com/main.html borders on the too busy, but good, good sized thumbnails and pics. His pt/pd is not all that great, or at least the scans are not, but the site is good IMO.

 

[jd callow]

what about Dead Link Removed
Images are sized based upon browser size (hit reload if you resize your browser). Photography is the best on the web and I have absolutely no affiliation with this site.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

My tastes are similar to Jorge's--no Shockwave, Flash, Java, animation, popups, and other crap that just slows everything down. I also prefer images sized for the web, so they don't take longer to load than they need to.

 

[jd callow]

mark tucker's is one of the nicest i have seen
Dead Link Removed

The site is good, but I am bothered by the artist's use of blurring. It is as if he thinks his compositions are not strong enough without literally dictating the viewer's focus. Many a good picture ruined in my tiny opinion.

 

[c6h6o3]

I'm in the planning stages for a much needed redesign of my website. It's been over two years since I put it up, and want to add a lot of new stuff to it. I've spent the last few days clicking around the web checking out photographers sites and have been really disapointed for the most part. It seams that a lot of photographers think they are web designers... most arent

What are your favorite photographer website? what do you like about them? What do you look for when going to a photographers website?

Brian

Sites I like:

Chris Jordan
Keith Laban
Christopher Burkett
Michael Smith & Paula Chamlee

What I like about them:

All of these sites are mostly about the pictures. The menu penetration to the pictures is never more than two clicks from the homepage, and in Keith Laban's case is zero clicks; he hits you right between the eyes on the home page. I hate these sites which force you endure endless bios and mindless blather about their "philosophy of art" or their technical details just to get to some pictures. If it takes me more than 3 mouse clicks to see a piece of the photographer's work, I just click out.

I look for, in order of importance:

Spectacular work.

Any easy, short route to that work from the home page.

E-commerce ordering of prints from the website. A lot of photographers neglect this. If all your efforts are focussed on getting people to go to your website, follow through by providing them with an opportunity to buy before they click away. Don't make them pick up the phone or email you. Allow them to buy right now.

One feature of many websites (and not just photography ones) which I detest is the use of framesets. They are a holdover from the early days of the web, and cause far more trouble than they're worth. They predispose the pages to a cluttered look, they're difficult to maintain, and they're a pain for the end user because you can't bookmark individual target pages inside the frames. Avoid them like the plague. I've worked for a lot of places where they were outright banned.

 

[Jorge]

The site is good, but I am bothered by the artist's use of blurring. It is as if he thinks his compositions are not strong enough without literally dictating the viewer's focus. Many a good picture ruined in my tiny opinion.

Funny, I kind of liked the way he printed with the blurr. My problem is that it was done in too many of the prints. In some it added to the quality of the pics, in others I found myself saying " I wish he had printed everything sharp on this one."

 

[mark]

what about Dead Link Removed
Images are sized based upon browser size (hit reload if you resize your browser). Photography is the best on the web and I have absolutely no affiliation with this site.

All I get are a bunch of pictures of you and question marks where the images are supposed to be when I look at the catalogues. I get to see the pictures you have on the pages before the catalogues though. I'm using Safari.

 

[bmac]

I have had several people tell me that my site doesnt work on Safari either. Sounds like Safari is using technology from the mid 90's. Javascript doenst always work, flash, etc.

 

[hither]

The site is good, but I am bothered by the artist's use of blurring. It is as if he thinks his compositions are not strong enough without literally dictating the viewer's focus. Many a good picture ruined in my tiny opinion.

Iwanted to comment on Tucker's work as well, but mainly to say that I wonder what he is using to get the DOF trickery. Almost the same affect one gets reversing a 55mm lens in lieu of a macro lens. Is he a Lensbaby user? No "how I dunnits" on his site, though the work is quite strong.

 

[Francesco]

My tastes are not for frames, but I can accept that others will go for it. Also, I am not a big fan of wasting space on diaries and musings, but I suppose some might find that entertaining. I really like the ability to move from a small to a large view of a photograph (not many like this extra effort). I have never felt secure about secure servers - e commerce on small sites are tenuous at best. But I certainly would like to know the costs of purchasing a photograph without having to email first. I also prefer to minimise the amount of items in one page in order not to hassle the viewer with having to scroll down for too long (I like to put a "next page" button instead).

The preceding are some subjective reasons why I like a site or not. The objective reasons which I find are important are: ease of use, clarity of scans, focus on the photographs and less on Dreamweaver bells and whistles, consistent updates (makes me feel that the photographer is still around), and of course speed of upload.

 

[Mongo]

Iwanted to comment on Tucker's work as well, but mainly to say that I wonder what he is using to get the DOF trickery. Almost the same affect one gets reversing a 55mm lens in lieu of a macro lens. Is he a Lensbaby user? No "how I dunnits" on his site, though the work is quite strong.

Check out Dead Link Removed

 

[FrankB]

what about Dead Link Removed

I'm not sure that the site is to my taste, but the photography is really stunning! Great work!

 

[photomc]

With Jorge and David, don't like all of the flash, wiz-bang stuff. Simple is good. One that I do like is Michael Johnson - Dead Link Removed , does have thumbs that are big enough to see something - plus with a dial-up line (28.8) you find sites that load quickly or learn a lot of patients.

 

[doughowk]

Several web browser technologies available:
1) Flash. A Macromedia proprietery technology that is available for most browsers that support incorporating objects into a web page. Readily available as a download. Most available Flash photo viewers(freeware/shareware) have a high-tech appearance & lack easy configurations for image size, color, etc.. Flash seems more appropriate for the cell-phone, snapshot user or digital graphic artist than traditional photography.
2) Frames. Very "old" web techonology started by Netscapeback around 2.5-3.0 version. Is supported on most browsers. Does enable a menu system combined with thumbnails with photos appearing in one frame ( good technology for when most people had dial-up connections). Main problem with frames is fault of unoriginal designers ( ubiquitious top-banner with left-side menu & center display space, scroolbar & frame visibility, etc.).
3) Javascript. Lack of a standard of support among all browsers - have to design for MS Internet Explorer, then do work-arounds for Netscape/Mozilla, etc..
4) IFrames. Exclusive to MS IE, I believe. Similiar to frames but with more dynamic control.
5) Photoshop Web publishing. Uses very rudimentary HTML . Need some HTML coding knowledge to customize the web-site to get away from one-size fits all design. With most users in US & many other countries now having high-speed connections, some of drawbacks are reduced (separate pages for each image). Mr Tucker's site listed above ( as well as mine) use this technology.

 

[jd callow]

Funny, I kind of liked the way he printed with the blurr. My problem is that it was done in too many of the prints. In some it added to the quality of the pics, in others I found myself saying " I wish he had printed everything sharp on this one."

My thoughts as well. Many of the photos benefit from the blurring, many don't. It had begun to look like a gimmick after a while. I thought most if not all the compositions stood up well on their own w/o the technique applied.

Having done nothing but beat on him, I should also add that I think he is a very talented photographer. I enjoyed both his work and his site.

----

Here is a site I took over from anouther developer 3 years ago. I inherited the structure so I can't take all the credit/blame for it.
Dead Link Removed
I will be rebuilding it later this year.
Here is a small photog's site I built a couple years back. I like this site and will gladly take the credit/blame. I also feel it is pretty effective.
Dead Link Removed

 

[jd callow]

3) Javascript. Lack of a standard of support among all browsers - have to design for MS Internet Explorer, then do work-arounds for Netscape/Mozilla, etc..

I agree with everything Doug says with one caveat. JavaScript will work as advertised in all mainstream, up to date, browsers and most 2nd tier. The broblem is generally not JavaScript but the Document Object Model (DOM) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) support or implementation of the browser.

Mozilla/Netscape/FireFox follows the DOM and CSS closely and has excellent documentation on where it doesn't comply.

IE is close and far easier to work with, but often sets its own standard which leaves complient browsers out in the cold or the coder is left to write parrallel methods or an additional browser layer.

Safari has some fairly major issues, particularly with block elements and images (img).

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

2) Frames. Very "old" web techonology started by Netscapeback around 2.5-3.0 version. Is supported on most browsers. Does enable a menu system combined with thumbnails with photos appearing in one frame ( good technology for when most people had dial-up connections). Main problem with frames is fault of unoriginal designers ( ubiquitious top-banner with left-side menu & center display space, scroolbar & frame visibility, etc.).

I plead guilty--top banner, left side menu, right side display space (not that different from center), scrollbar for the menu frame, depending on screensize.

http://www.echonyc.com/~goldfarb/photo

Now that I look at it, the top bar doesn't really do much. I had plans for it originally, but I could probably replace it with a link back to the main page in the menu frame.

Design suggestions that don't introduce browser incompatibilities, require plug-ins, or slow things down are welcome. I pretty much hand code everything, but occasionally I'll use a shareware program called Web Weaver, which has some handy shortcuts for tables and such.

 

[eric]

Check out Dead Link Removed

Ahhh, plungercam web site is BACK! It's been gone from his web site for a while now. A $3000.00 Holga. Got to love it. I REALY like the images from the Plungercam and yes, to all the comments above. He uses his Hassy for all the other stuff and then blurs them in software. But he is talented. Who knows what his other stuff looks like. He's has what? about 200 photos on his web site. He must have about 100,000 paid images somewhere in his repertoire. I'm sure a majority of it is not blurred like that.

His plugercam inspired me to take apart one of my old Holgas and stick the lens in front of my digicam. It didn't work. I don't know 'nuf of lens design to get that right. My next project (get in back of the line like all the other projects), is to get a bellows and some cheap lenses you get at the scientific store (you know, the one you used in 6th grade and made a telescope). That pretty much is how Lensbabies are made anyway.

 

[jd callow]

I plead guilty--top banner, left side menu, right side display space (not that different from center), scrollbar for the menu frame, depending on screensize.

http://www.echonyc.com/~goldfarb/photo

Now that I look at it, the top bar doesn't really do much. I had plans for it originally, but I could probably replace it with a link back to the main page in the menu frame.

Design suggestions that don't introduce browser incompatibilities, require plug-ins, or slow things down are welcome. I pretty much hand code everything, but occasionally I'll use a shareware program called Web Weaver, which has some handy shortcuts for tables and such.

David everything you are doing with frames could be done with the div tag and the addition of positioning via the style attribute:
<div name="banner" style="position:absolute; top:0; left:0; width:100%; height:15%; overflow:hidden;">David G's big bad Photo Web Site</div>


<div name='menu' style="position:absolute; top:15%; left:0; width:20%; height:100%; overflow:auto;">menu items would go here</div>

<div name='mainContent' style="position:absolute; top:15%; left:20%; width:80%; height:100%; overflow:auto;">David's big bad photo's</div>


Bad, of course being good in this instance.

jdc