Professional Website using Templates?
Hi folks,
I'm getting ready to plan for the rest of the year in terms of equipment purchases and website expenditures.
What I'd like are some honest opinions about the look of my current website as opposed to my "beta" website that I'm currently evaluating to see if it will meet my needs.
Current site: http://www.benchasephoto.com
Beta site: http://chasecen.photium.com/
What I'm really looking for is something that looks very professional, and remains pretty simple without a lot of scripting or other complexity. Photium seems like it may work, has anyone used this service before?
Opinions appreciated,
Ben Chase
Re: Professional Website using Templates?
I think one must first define the target audience for a site, and then define the objectives for the site within the context of the primary audience. Different "markets" will have different expectations and different levels of tolerance for variations in site design. In other words, what would appear "professional" to an average consumer will be different than how an Art Director at a magazine or an art collector would define the term. A consumer might accept a canned template approach, while the AD or collector might not.
I do feel that having your own domain name, as you have, is a good first step, however.
Re: Professional Website using Templates?
I agree completely with Ralph.
In any case, if you use a template, It will benefit from some significant tweaking, preferably with the counsel of a designer. Almost all the templates I've seen are pretty disasterous from a design perspective, although many are salvageable if you're able to simplify them, remove extraneous colors and borders, etc. etc.
One specific comment: black is a poor choice for a background for photographs. There are some images that work against black, but it's very unlikely that all of your work will. The background tends to compete with the shadow areas of your images, making them look washed out.
The only color I've found that works universally is white. You can use black or another color on main pages, but on your photo gallery pages you'll almost definitely find white to work better.
Re: Professional Website using Templates?
That's an interesting observation regarding black backgrounds. I can't tell you how many photographers whose sites I've seen have a black background. I was looking at some color images and kind of thought that the black worked well with them. But I think it would be better to keep the color schemes/styles the same on all pages in a website.
Re: Professional Website using Templates?
Paul, I completely disagree with you about black backgrounds. After trying many (I think white sucks worst that is why we don't use it as backgound in PS to work on images) I found grey or black to be the best. The only problem with black is when you have a deep black shadows at the edge of the image it merges with the background unless you use boarders.
Re: Professional Website using Templates?
This one is pretty cool..customized template stuff.
http://www.foliolink.com/
Re: Professional Website using Templates?
I agree with Ralph and Kirk. I use a gray background and enlarged images are then framed. I use the template that Verve Labs in Sante Fe designed. I prefer the simple - do not overwhelm the viewer - approach. Too many distracting images and competing information on a page can take away from the images.
Mike
Re: Professional Website using Templates?
Mike,
I think Versa labs' offering is very good. I use Sitewelder as do many others including Chip Simon. It is a real simple black box approach which I need, but yet is very flexible if you want it to be.
Re: Professional Website using Templates?
Thank you for the advice, I'll try everything that was suggested to see what fits my needs the best. E-commerce isn't exactly the most important thing to me right now, as about 90% of the people that purchase prints from me do so on a custom basis, meaning that I usually work with each individual person to give them exactly what they want.
At this point, I want to make sure the presentation of the work is what it should be.
Thanks again! Your comments are very helpful!
Re: Professional Website using Templates?
A graphic designer friend of mine tells me that you need to be very careful about using black. It can send out a lot of negatives about the web site. Like other colours which send subconcious signals. i.e. white is for purity. Black is for the dark side. Red is warm but also dangerous and blue is cold and un-inviting etc etc etc. Rather than looking at photographers web sites, look at real galleries web sites to get a better picture if you pardon the pun.
I have rewritten mine several times and depending on my mood it changes from black to grey to white to warm grey to white and on and on. It always seems to come back to white for me.
latest minimal version: black and white photos