[EdMaximus]

This is the first thread I starts here. I hope it can be useful. I know we are all picture takers. An essential part of getting our work out there I believe is to have a great personal website where you can lead people to see your work. Some of us rely on services like smugmug, flickr, etc but I think it's more professional if you can have a website customized to your liking. With that says let's start showing our websites for others to give us what they think of it and how we can improve it.

For every post, just critique the website of the person above you based on presentation, accessibility, and professionalism and post your website with a little something about it.


I'll start with mine. It's at Edson Andre Photography . I have had it for 4 years now since 1st year of college. At first it was just a website for me to show my friends how cool I was. Then it became my personal website where for my info and resume. Then it transforms into my graphic and web design portfolio. Finally it became my photography website. Feel free to check it out and critique it. Dont be nice.

[figmental1978]

Howdy, I'll be first to play.

Layout - I like the colours of your blog, they are warm and inviting and make your monochrome images really stand out. Navigation is also simple and easy to get around the site.

Portfolio - I think your portfolio is strong with some great portraits but feel it could be broken up a little, maybe into candids and portraits or studio shots, etc which shows some diversity. Also, it looks like your photos are of family and friends and you want to make a few bucks so you slapped a price for a session. I would remove all that, get some clients, put them in your portfolio and then start trying to make some money, but that's just my opinion. Most importantly is your having fun with your photos and website/blog.

Daily Picture - It's cool as you are showing different types of photography without straying from your main style which seems to be portraiture. My issue is you also have a blog, a flickr link and a slide show on your main page so I think maybe there's too many areas where you show your photos. Maybe narrow it down a little.

About Me - If you are looking for clients, I would remove your about me page or edit it to make it more professional. There's a few cheesy lines in there, why don't you ask someone to write it for you or write it in third person.

Blog - I like the feel of the blog too, maybe with your photos you can use the blog to tell us how you took them, what equipment you used, etc, get a little more personal.

Contact me - You already have a contact me in the services area, maybe no need for the two and maybe the contact area is best suited in the about me section.

Overall it's a great little site with different elements like the blog, daily photos and portfolio that show a different aspect to your photography. I hope there's some constructive criticism here that you can use to your advantage. Good luck with the site, blog and your photography. Cheers.

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As for my blog, it's www.photoshumi.com. I use the site as a blog and a portfolio, I'm not trying to sell anything, just better my photography. I've been running photo shumi since 2007 when I was using a Holga and a friends Minolta, then took it more seriously when I got my K10D and a few Takumar lenses.

[EdMaximus]

Thank you so much for the critique Figmental.

Layout - I like the colours of your blog, they are warm and inviting and make your monochrome images really stand out. Navigation is also simple and easy to get around the site.

Thank you. That's one thing I definitely like about the site

Portfolio - I think your portfolio is strong with some great portraits but feel it could be broken up a little, maybe into candids and portraits or studio shots, etc which shows some diversity. Also, it looks like your photos are of family and friends and you want to make a few bucks so you slapped a price for a session. I would remove all that, get some clients, put them in your portfolio and then start trying to make some money, but that's just my opinion. Most importantly is your having fun with your photos and website/blog.

Almost everything you said about the portfolio is right. I will eventually break it down into section once I have more pictures to show. Yes most of those pictures are of my friends in college but that's where my client base is too. I have a few paid jobs coming and I will update the portfolio with the pictures from those eventually.

Daily Picture - It's cool as you are showing different types of photography without straying from your main style which seems to be portraiture. My issue is you also have a blog, a flickr link and a slide show on your main page so I think maybe there's too many areas where you show your photos. Maybe narrow it down a little.

That's been hard for me to do. I noticed that I have too much going on but narrowing it down is hard to do. I'm moving away from Flickr now so I think i will remove this link from my site. I have to keep the blog and the daily picture thing tho.

About Me - If you are looking for clients, I would remove your about me page or edit it to make it more professional. There's a few cheesy lines in there, why don't you ask someone to write it for you or write it in third person.

I suck at writing English. When I wrote that I definitely didn't want to take myself seriously. I'm actually one of the cheesiest person alive. I do have to do a better job at describing myself so potential clients wont get turned away by that.

Blog - I like the feel of the blog too, maybe with your photos you can use the blog to tell us how you took them, what equipment you used, etc, get a little more personal.

I will try doing that more.

Contact me - You already have a contact me in the services area, maybe no need for the two and maybe the contact area is best suited in the about me section.

Yeap! I'm getting rid of the Contact me page. I need space up there to put another link to my upcoming video projects

Overall it's a great little site with different elements like the blog, daily photos and portfolio that show a different aspect to your photography. I hope there's some constructive criticism here that you can use to your advantage. Good luck with the site, blog and your photography. Cheers.

Thank you again mate for the great critique. I will leave your website to be critiqued by someone else. If no one does it, I will definitely come back and take a stab at it.

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Please Critique figmental1978's website.

As for my blog, it's www.photoshumi.com. I use the site as a blog and a portfolio, I'm not trying to sell anything, just better my photography. I've been running photo shumi since 2007 when I was using a Holga and a friends Minolta, then took it more seriously when I got my K10D and a few Takumar lenses.

[figmental1978]

No one interested? I can't believe a bunch of photographers, half who probably have blogs or online portfolios of some sort are not interested in doing this. Scared of a little criticism are we?

[EdMaximus]

No one interested? I can't believe a bunch of photographers, half who probably have blogs or online portfolios of some sort are not interested in doing this. Scared of a little criticism are we?

It's something that I suspect. A lot of photographers tend to ignore the value of having a good website. Although your work can speak for itself, you might reduce its worth by the way you present it. I'm not going to rant about that so let me return the favor to you my friend.

Homepage
Your front page is simple which is a good thing but I feel like it's lacking something. It doesn't inspire me to click on the links to find out what's inside. I know you might not want to take the typical front page slideshow route but putting a nice picture there or some information about you or what you do might do the job. One thing you can do to is expand the height of the banner in the front page to take more space and put the links above the banner.

Blog
The blog does its job as far as presenting your work and your thought. Aesthetically you can make some improvement on it though. The gray header that you use doesn't have enough contrast to stand out from the background. You might want to use black or a lighter gray that's closer to white for the heading of the articles. You might want to also increase the font size of the main menu too because it's hidden way up there.

Portfolio
Again the portfolio page does what it's supposed to do. My one gripe with it is that the main menu to go to your blog, your flickr page, and home is absent from that page.

About
The about page should definitely have a link in the front page. In the about page, the div that has the little icons (coolphotoblogs, etc) needs to be fixed. I haven't checked the css but i'm assuming that it's in a fixed position. Viewing that page on a small screen, the icons sit right on top of the recent post column.

Beside those things, keep up the good job. I enjoy looking at your photography.

[Scottnorwo]

Very nice website. Layout is done professionally and is easily navigated. I like the rotating pictures on the main page. I agree that you about me page needs to be rewritten, too much info a customer does not need.
Your photos are wonderful. You have a good eye for portraiture.

[Ash]

Edson, I too like the simplicity and easy to navigate nature of your website.
Your services are clearly indicated and a potential client would find it easy to contact you for your specific services.
My only suggestion would be to include the main toolbar of Portfolio, Daily Picture, Services, Blog, About Me on each page in the same location for even easier navigation in one step to those important pages.
Great stuff.

Scott, yours too is easy to navigate and simple in layout and design.
I don't find the need to watermark names over images to protect them personally, since web images are far too low resolution to do anything with them - EXIF copyright data suffices. But I understand this is a personal thing...
Making your services made clearer would go a way to enticing clients to contact you.

As for my own site - there would be much to critique as it's a quick self-made job hosted by Tripod with limited web-building tools...

[figmental1978]

Thanks for the critique Afroed. I agree with the homepage, it's too static with not enough information. I could either add a random image, a slide show or even delete it altogether. I'll have to think about it.

As for the blog, it is a little bleak but I didn't want the colour scheme to clash with the photos, just compliment it and I find grey does that well. The header banner actually changes every time you reload with about 7 versions, some a re brighter than others. I'll also be fixing the menu links, enlarging and making them bold.

The portfolio is new and I decided not to put the other links (flickr, about, etc) there to have less information on the page.

The about page links are a little off, I'll fix those kinks. Cheers for the comments, I appreciate it. To other members who have a site/blog, it's a good experience having someone other than your significant other give you a critique and can help your site become better so I hope others join in on this thread.

[figmental1978]

As for my own site - there would be much to critique as it's a quick self-made job hosted by Tripod with limited web-building tools...

Ash, you can very easily build a site/blog/portfolio + hosting for free with no advertising. The only thing I paid for on my site was the domain name. PM if you want more details.

[adamkean]

less is more on websites, so keep the text to what you think is the minimum to describe yourself, and then make it even shorter