It's high time to get with the program! Please take a look at my new website...

[Cletus]

Okay, I'm not sure this is the right section - Mods, please move this post if this isn't the correct category - but (woohoo!) I finally have my website and blog up and running! Everything is very new and still quite rough around the edges. I still have much work to do to make it shiny and nice, and still quite a few images yet to touch up and upload. All that aside (I'd never get anything done if I waited until it was perfect!) I think I have a good start and finally have little work out there.

I would very much appreciate a little feedback from the group, if anyone cares to take a quick look.

http://www.mausphoto.com/

Thank you for your constructive comments and remarks!

[John Kasaian]

Nice looking site! I really like the simple graphics which add to the spirit of your photographs rather than compete for attention. The gray background makes your B&W images "pop" out at the viewer.
improvements? More images, please!:D

[Brian Ellis]

Nice site and excellent photographs. But IMHO throughout the site you put too much emphasis on the materials and processes and too little on the photographs themselves. Few people outside of sites like this even know or care what "silver gelatin" means. Yet you divide your galleries not on the basis of the general subject matter or something else about the photographs but on how they're made (as one example). And what text I read was mostly about the processes rather than the photographs.

With photographs as fine as many of these are I think they deserve more discussion and the processes used to make them (and not make them) deserve less. But it's your site and if it's the processes you deem most important that's your decision to make. Personally I think the photographs are more important than the methods used (and not used) to make them.

I don't know if you've heard of him but you might like the work of Andrew Boroweic, a photographer whose interests lie along somewhat the same lines as yours. If you go to this web site - http://reciprocity-failure.blogspot.com/2013/05/andrew-borowiec-update.html - you'll find links to two discussion by him of his work. You'll notice that he uses film but spends little time talking about that and instead talks mostly about his interests and why he makes the photographs he does. It's something along those lines that I have in mind when I suggest less talk about processes and more about the photographs.

Hope you take this in the spirit it's intended. I normally wouldn't have said anything but you asked for constructive comments and suggestions so I take you at your word.

[Otto Seaman]

Why do you have download buttons and links that require a log-in?

You should put a link back to your site from your blog.

There is a lot of housekeeping to do but the overall first impression is good, you just have to clean up the details and pretend that you are an outside, detached viewer to appreciate what they encounter.

[Cletus]

Brian -

Thank you for your comments and your opinion and I most certainly hope I do take what you're saying in the spirit you intended! I'm sure without your having said it, I really didn't realize just how much emphasis I've placed on the "process" as you put it and basically de-emphasized the photographs themselves. Some things are just plain hard to see without an outside opinion. It is rather important to me to that my work is showcased as being original, 'handmade' prints using film and traditional processes, but it really had not occurred to me to what extent this may or may not be important to anyone else (outside of maybe the LFF or APUG groups anyway!).

I definitely have MUCH more to do with categorizing, sequencing and captioning the photographs, not to mention another 20 or 30 yet to edit and upload, but I do agree that much more weight should be placed on the subjects and on the photographs themselves than on the process, thank you!

Otto -

Actually, I noticed the Download button above each image, but until you mentioned it I have never clicked on it! That's one of a rather long list of items I need to fix, thank you. I believe the intent there is so you can sell the "High Res" digital image as a download and then give the client the password. But that's just a guess. I set this all up in Photoshelter, which is a decent platform, but it's also geared more toward working, selling photogs like wedding or commercial photographers I think. I still haven't figured out some of the ways you can (and can't) customize the template to the way you want it - and I'm not the best at websitey, networkey, internety stuff like this, so it'll probably take me a while to get everything all the way I want it. Anyway, I do intend to make it possible to purchase prints and I have to add a page for that, but for now I just wanted to get something up there. I know myself well enough to know that if I wait for it to be perfect, I'll NEVER get it done!

Oh! And I definitely need to figure out how to link from my Blog back to my Portfolio site! I didn't notice that little oversight either.


Thanks Otto and Brian - I mean really, thanks a lot! - for your comments. I am certainly paying attention. I hope I can hear from a few others as well.

[Taija71A]

____

Hi Phil!

I just had the *** Pleasure *** of having the opportunity... To take a look at your new Website.
Congratulations on all of your hard work Phil! IMNSHO... It thus far has really paid off! :)

Phil... I really like the fact that your site is very 'clean' looking and is also extremely easy to navigate! I also like the fact that (for the present time at least) that you only have three (3) Galleries to navigate through... As opposed to say 20, 30 or 50 Galleries. You get the idea of course!
--
Like Brian has previously mentioned, I too would like to see you caption your images with something like Andrew Boroweic does (say... 'Van Buren Street, Newark, New Jersey, 2012.......... © Andrew Borowiec 2013)... Instead of 'untitled shoot20...jpg'. I have always thought that this looks extremely 'Professional' and also serves to 'Highlight' *each* and every image as an 'Individual' Image.
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Brian... I did not notice any Pricing $$$ for your images on the Web Site -- At the present time. Is this something that you have given *any due consideration* to? Like they say... 'Just a Thought!'

Keep up the GRRRREAT work Phil! :)
--
Best,

-Tim.
________

[Keith Pitman]

Enjoyed seeing your images.

[gleaf]

Impressive start. Agree with navigation comments. The net brings people with no detail process knowledge. Organization of documentation to an receptive and agreeing audience is 'here is the answer', then 'here is the why'. For an less receptive audience, 'here are the reasons', then 'here is the answer'. If you are trying to be instructional perhaps a pairing of specific photos that show off the unique advantage of each process so as to provide a potential customer an understanding of why there are indeed two processes available to gain them a fine art result. I would make that instructional bit a separate linked path.

[Otto Seaman]

Honestly, the template is nice and clean and your photos are fine to excellent, but the way you've started it, it's a mess. You're slightly over your head.

You're getting a lot of bland compliments because we're nerdy enough to overlook the rough edges and focus on the pictures but it's only other photo geeks who see it that way. The rest of your audience is going to get confused by missing links and weird organization, untitled photos, etc.

Phil, being new to having a website, there is a lot of value to using some of the free social media type sites as your test range and proving grounds. First, irregardless of your opinion of the ethics or ultimate quality of Facebook or Tumblr, they are FREE but they also have really good, intuitive navigation. Second, it is easy to develop captions and organize your story, they are faster and much easier to work with than most other web content management interfaces. Facebook allows you to sort and sequence your pix, which is of tremendous value. And Third, these sites help build your audience and send people to your professional site to either buy prints or hire you for assignments (or interact however you want them to).

I suspecting the Photo Shelter interface is a bit more complex to work with than what you can do on Facebook. So why not work out the sequences and captions on Facebook, on Mark Zuckerburg's dime, and get feedback as to which are your most popular pictures? Then transfer that knowledge into a very tight, professional presentation on your master professional site.

Granted I don't follow it verbatim but if one picture is liked 10x more than another on Facebook, that tells me something useful.

Right now it kind of looks like you're upside down in terms of being overwhelmed with options and choices with this site, so you'll probably do what most people do.. work really hard on it for a while and then walk away and forget everything you figured out, then have to relearn it all six months or years later when you can't wait any longer to update it ;-p I've seen this cycle repeated over and over with not only photographers but with larger corporate clients!

So work out the pictures, editing, captions, sequences on a fast and easy Facebook gallery and then once you get it tight, duplicate it on your main site. It will save you a lot of frustration.

Frankly what works from a marketing point of view is to get your master professional site very clean and minimal, with only your very finest work all sequenced and captioned. Every image needs Metadata embedded and you want to incorporate all the best practices for search engines to find your photos and also keep the photos associated with your copyright and contact info (embedded in your Metadata). Then you use social media like Facebook to post more frequent and maybe B-sides and some "behind the scenes", alternatives, golden oldies, etc. so that you can connect with your audience and send them to your master site. Same for Tumblr or Wordpress or however you want to blog... stick all the extra pictures on social media but keep your main site clean and tight. You want everything you do - Flickr, 500px, even this site - to be pointing people towards your site. And calling them to action to either buy something, hire you, or send you love and kisses....

Once you get the social media aspect established, you do it a little at a time over a long period of time rather than trying to cram everything all at once. It shows you what is working and what isn't, and it becomes part of having a photo lifestyle, as opposed to crunch time.

[Jim Galli]

Great start! Yes, captions, pleases. You have so much interesting stuff. I was mesmerized for hours reading about Duncan Manor "Towanda Mansion". It's for sale. $250 G's. I told my wife to buy it for me! What a gorgeous old place. Plus a 10 car garage / driving shed. Need that!

[Taija71A]

____

>> Plus a 10 car garage / driving shed. Need that!

Now Jim, is all of that Garage Space required for... All of your 'Old Fords' *** OR *** All of your 'Vintage Cameras and Lenses'??? Like they say... "Inquiring Minds Want to Know!" Just joking of course... :)
--
Best,

-Tim.
________

[Cletus]

Great start! Yes, captions, pleases. You have so much interesting stuff. I was mesmerized for hours reading about Duncan Manor "Towanda Mansion". It's for sale. $250 G's. I told my wife to buy it for me! What a gorgeous old place. Plus a 10 car garage / driving shed. Need that!

Jim -

Isn't that a great old house? I'm not saying it to highlight my photo of it - heck, all I really did was, um, drive over a couple fences and barriers, cut across someone else's field a little and tresspass like all hell - just to point my 8x10 at it and (quickly) make a couple exposures! :eek: It was only by coincidence that it turned out to be one of my favorite images.

Thank you for your comments!

[Ari]

Nice work and presentation, Phil. I like the simplicity of it all, and, unlike Brian, I'm not too concerned about why and how you do things.
Your brief blurbs in 'About' and 'Processes' are to the point.
And you have a typo on the 'Processes' page: presence (italicized on your page).