Been mucking around abit today really, and I think I would like to have a website to show my portfolio of photos (art student, foundation year planned, then who knows….) and i’ve been looking at websites on t’net…and found this

My portfolio

and knocked this up. Its really simple, and i think good fun, as all i did was upload photos, choose colours etc. Now obviosuly this is a trial and will run out, for a year of hosting and “renting” the website software, this costs £337!!!! Which I think is pretty expensive, compared to a “homemade” website, even with hostign fees etc, not a properly designed one!

Anyway, really i’m looking for opinions on what sort of photography portfolio websites people like? As its not for people to order photos from, but simply a showcase, are playful elements such as in the website above acceptble? or are they annoying?

I quite like this http://www.mattstuart.com/ Not too much going on but looks good with a few neat touches.

Also, I’ve played around with dreamweaver abit but its too complciated for me, are there any other simpler programs out there, but somewaht manage to produce something that doesnt look like its out of publisher/frontpage?!

Cheers

Please link to your own websites and others that you think are good!

yes, that’s expensive, you’re paying a big premium for the content management. I’m paying half that for 15GB online storage for the Bog Trotters, but of course I’ve insisted on writing all that myself 🙂

Thats quite a nice site you’ve got there simon! Like the GPS/map/photo thing! What software did you use, and who for hosting the site (and are they any good?!)??

Thanks alot!

the trial website of yours is annoying, its trying to be too fancy and failing because of it. Something simple where you can see all the thumbnails the right way up with the big photo to the side of the thumbnails would look better IMO.

Agreed, bit too gimmicky perhaps.

Found this

http://www.ericryananderson.com/

Again quite simple, side scrolling, wouldnt be to hard to make something similar?

What software did you use

like I said, I wrote it all (it’s what I do). The hosting company is http://www.haisoft.net – they’re OK – I’ve been using them for about 3 years now

I’m sorting out a image viewer site for a few friends of mine right now, that might suit your needs. It was designed for some illustrators, that needed to upload their own images, to fit a pre-made template.

They can change the colours, and the copy, as much as they like with a free FTP package. They know nothing about the interweb etc: but the template can hold up to 81 images, and can have backgrounds and interface elements of their choice.

If you drop me a mail, i’ll send you over a link to an example, with photographs instead of children’s illustration.

My ISP is playing silly buggers right now, so i cant get access to my server.

there’s a link here to a slimmed down version with dummy copy, and minimal images. It would work just as well for a photographer, as an illustrator.

draught site

Incedently, none of the images have been optimised yet, so you’ll see a few loading bars until i have compressed the images to a sensible level. Then you should not see any ‘loading’ type stuff, unless your on a very slow connection.

Also, if you get a copy of adobe lightroom, they have a pretty swish flash photo gallery called ‘Simpleviewer’ which you can customize as you wish.

It’s a free download from the Airtight site, and looks good (IMHO)

simpleviewer

I find the “flashturbation” thing a bit annoying at times, and unfortunately that portfolio is one of them. Too much style, not enough usability. Have you considered carbonmade.com?

£337

But you aren’t just paying for the hosting – the developers are also recouping the outlay in developing the system and giving you nice templates to play with.

I think it is a bargain – come to us asking for a website designing, building, hosting and with a CMS and it would be considerably more expensive than that. But then again, with us you would get real personal service from real people.

Mastile_fanylion, i did try to make that point (not very clearly), its quite gvfm if its what you want!

Completely forgot about lightrooms ablitity to make websites. I’ll have abit of play with that me thinks!

Cheers guys

You could do it all for free by running a wordpress account and a flickr page or even a posterous account.

But that one you’ve done looks stylish to me, though quite annoying. Enough to make me go “that’s OK” and (quite a biggy) it seems hard to steal the pics (only possible to do a screen grab then crop, unless you’re clever maybe).

I pay a lot less than that for a Photium website – developed by a very friendly chap specifically for photographers to showcase their work.

Despite being an ‘off the shelf’ template site, it’s fairly easy to customise it. Best of all, the developer is one of the most helpful folk you could ever hope to email – almost always gets back to you within an hour of an enquiry (even if the answer is in the FAQs 😳 ).

Mine’s HERE if you want a gander.

P.S. – no relationship with Photium, other than being a very happy customer.

some food for thought: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/04/creating-a-successful-online-portfolio/

and

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/29/ultimate-guide-to-using-wordpress-for-a-portfolio/

Unfortunately there’s no such thing as a cheap and decent website unless you can do it yourself and actually know what you’re doing…

I’m going to stay out of this debate because I’ll end in a bitter rant over why people assume this stuff should cheap or free and still be decent…

This isn’t a dig at the OP but I had a wedding photographer approach me for a site. He’ll happily charge £1500 for days work to shoot a wedding but thinks that paying me £400 a day is daylight robbery. So glad I don’t freelance anymore – the day I took an agency job the better!

I would suggest it may be worthwhile looking at OpenSource CMS solutions like Joomla! or Drupal because they are OpenSource they are essentially free, you have no licensing issues.

There are companies out there who will host them for you and Joomla! is pretty good, can have lots of things added in such as an image gallery. You will have to learn how to use the CMS but you don’t need to know how to code unless you really want to.

Things that are free can be decent, but if you need assistance you are likely to have to pay something.

Good luck.

I’m going to stay out of this debate because I’ll end in a bitter rant over why people assume this stuff should cheap or free and still be decent…

He’ll happily charge £1500 for days work to shoot a wedding but thinks that paying me £400 a day is daylight robbery.

Absolutely agree wholeheartedly! We sometimes get people approach us wanting CMS driven bespoke eComms sites and then look shocked when the quote is several thousand pounds not a few hundred.

If you’re on a mac then get a copy of Coda from Panic Software and a cheap and cheerful hosting package. Do some reading up on the web you should be able to knock up a simple site like Matt Stuarts with no need for the OTT flashitis.

If you’re stuck on using a ready-made gallery / portfolio tool why not get your head around a CMS tool like textpattern. There are heaps of free templates and plugins that are well documented and that you can use and customize with no bother. Places like flickr offer free slideshows and there are numerous free plugins and wrappers for their tools like Pictobrowser.

There are also some free portfolio sites – try Krop

You’ll get a far better understanding (IMO) of how a site works coding using a tool like Coda rather than a WYSIWYG program like Dreamweaver etc.

Just my 2p’s worth…