As a photographer what do you look for in a website?

<p>Hello Everybody. Besides being a serious photo enthusiast I'm a web designer in the process of designing a photography website and I would greatly appreciate the feedback of professional photographers. When visiting a photographer's website, what elements do you look for, home page or elsewhere? I started a new web design project and I want to push the envelope on this one. The web is full of Flashy web galleries, but this time around I'm opting for a magazine style structure and layout. What's your ideal photographer's website and why? What's the good, the bad, and the ugly in term of website design for photographers? Examples are welcome.</p>

<p>Any site that does not use Flash is already a step ahead in my book.</p>

<ul>

<li>I look for nothing that detracts from my experience of just looking at the photos.</li>

<li></li>

<li>Flash doesn't bother me, bad use of Flash does.</li>

<li></li>

<li>Use of music bothers me, bad graphics really bother me as does bad or unreadable typography.</li>

<li>Bad navigation really hurts: I want to know where I am and how I can get back to a jumping spot spot in one step fro many page. </li>

<li>As a photographer I want the ability to add or subtract images at will without having to wait for the designer /coder to get around to it. </li>

<li>I want it to use keywords - I want my sites to be searchable. </li>

<li><em>Finally showing any image that represents less than your very best work at given point in your career , even if you think there aren't enough photos in your galleries, really, really hurts. </em></li>

</ul>

a related question...how many galleries? How many photos per?

I'm thinking ~10 per, maybe three or four galleries. What's your preference?

 

 

What's too much, too little?

<p>Ãgree with Walt!</p>

<p>For me, the design of a gallery is *the* most important part of a photo site. My following comments are for a few other galleries in this forum. For examples, you can view these galleries in my recent posts.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>There is no image count for a gallery or portfolio, before and after entering one. Once in a gallery or portfolio, there are no thumbnails, and no way to skip forward or backward. Designing a gallery this way is like handing someone a book and expecting him to read from cover to cover sequentially, without knowing how many pages and unable to flip forward or backward. Yes, my ego wants everyone to view every image in my gallery sequentially. But that's not typically how a gallery visitor behaves.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Some site designs take numerous clicks (from a home page) before an enlargement is displayed. I would leave after the first couple of clicks.</p>

<p>Testing a site is an important and integral step before paying for and launching a site. Yet it is often overlooked and seldom done extensively across different platforms, browsers, window sizes, etc. You would think that the web designers would include such testing as part of their service, and say so in their promotions. But few do. I would not hire one that does not do so.<br /> <br /> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=41252" target="_blank">http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=41252</a></p>

<p>Spam prevention is another feature that few designers would mention and include as part of their service.</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/website-creation-forum/00YGpr</p>

As Walt says, no Flash. I use an iPad.

 

See Jakob Nielsen's columns.

<p>Great responses! I see a trend in the no flash approach. But I agree with Ellis, there's no problem with good use of Flash. The sad reality is that the vast majority of Flash sites out there are poorly designed and implemented. Thus the bad rep. However when we talk about keywords and SEO with Flash it get's tricky. What about WordPress, anyone have any ideas about what's possible with it?</p>

Perhaps I wasn't clear in my earlier post: If you use Flash, 100 million or so iPad users won't be able to see the site.

While I use a Mac in my work, I browse photo sites mostly in the evening, and only on my iPad. I skip Flash sites.

<p>Many years ago i spent a large amount on a flash site,the only visits it got were from me.so decided to do my own thing i now use Joomla with static web gallery.<br>

as said above to me flash is so 80's it should be banned as a health hazard,i know i get agro with thing popping and jumping all over the place"I AM JUST TRYING TO LOOK AT YOUR GALLERY" but no i must endure this bandwidth eating junk.<br>

And don't give me those pop out menu buttons that take a surgeons skill to navigate.<br>

and why must contact us be a secret hiding in some odd place so no one can find it .<br>

A tog site should be no more than 4-5 pages.</p>

<p>Hey guys, here's an article that you might find interesting:<br>

http://www.thephotoargus.com/freelance/10-trends-in-photography-website-design/</p>