Portfolio Website Design



Portfolio Website Design

LINKS FROM A PHOTO EDITOR

Portfolio Website Design

I think we’re all aware that the portfolio website is a very important tool for photographers and I’ll go so far as to predict that it will soon replace printed portfolios (bold, I know), so I wanted to create a quick reference guide for photographers looking for templates or designers or examples of portfolios that I like.
Flash vs. Html: I love flash. Photos look better in flash and there’s no way around it. There’s an argument floating around about using html so google can read/rank your website better that people seem to be confused about. It’s not so people can find you by name it’s so that people can find your images with google. If your photos are embedded in flash then the search engine doesn’t know you’ve got a killer photo of Richard Branson and when my Creative Director does a google image search to trounce the lame Corbis images I presented yours will not be in the results. Thats a problem. I think you will need a stock and a portfolio website to solve it.
There are other problems with flash as well, like incompatibility and deep linking issues but I still think the image quality trumps all that shit.
Livebooks: I’ve said it before, “I love livebooks.” They revolutionized the online portfolio. Big, vibrant photos and not much else. I’m not shillin’ for them at all and I can honestly say photographers have risen a notch in my book by switching to their product. Contributor Terence Patrick coined it “the black leather portfolio book of the web.” That’s how I feel about it as well. If you can’t beat it, don’t bother.


Famous Photographer Websites: Don’t look to them for inspiration. Check out Martin Schoeller’s website (here). Now google Martin Schoeller (here). Olivier Laude said in a previous post that the ultimate website is endless hits on google.


Ok, here’s what I’ve got. Please add to it and I’ll update.


Template websites
APhotoFolio

SiteWelder


FolioLink

LiveBooks

Other Peoples Pixels

Click Booq

Evirium

Blue Domain

Picaholic

Site Design Works

Big Folio

Parade

Creative Motion Design


Custom designed websites

Robinizer

Group 94

Neon Sky

I House Design


Free designs or DIY

Pixel Post

Movable Type/

Indexhibit

WordPress (Big UP)


My favorite creative sites

Jason Fulford

Matthew Mahon

Tanit Sakakini


The best I’ve seen for displaying photography

Nick Cobbing


Here are some my contributors like

Great flash sites:

Jeff Wall Exhibitiion

Filippas Medhagensund

Lauren Greenfield


Jeremy Cowart

Tom Nagy


Red wrote: HTML rules.

Erik W

Yerin Mok

Eliot Shepard

Alec Soth


First, a good flash site: Todd Hido

Second, a good CSS/HTML site: Graeme Mitchell


Fazal Sheikh

Jacob Holdt


Elizabeth Weinberg.com