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