Websites?

[Robert Brummitt]

I want to know how many of you have websites?
What is it for? Marketing or show and tell?
Is it visited much?
How much did or do you pay for it?
Did you pay to have a designer create it or did you do it yourself?
Do you see a benefit?
I'm asking for a feel of what is happening out there? I have an thought and I want to get a better feel about it. I chat with other photographs and they say, "Do you have a site?" or "See my work at www."
I don't have a site. I use flicker, and forums such as this and Facebook.
Love to hear what you have to say?

[sully75]

I have a website through Viewbook.com

It was better when I was a semi-pro and was updating it with new projects frequently. Now it's quite stale, mostly old work.

Viewbook started out poor but now is really quite good I think. Very inexpensive relative to the other pro-services.

I think smugmug and other stuff like that looks quite awful, as does almost everyone's home made sites. That's my personal opinion.

For the most part, lately, I use Flickr because it's convenient and I'm not trying to get jobs. Very easy and the community is actually pretty good. Many photographers I really respect use it (not big names but great people).

Check out viewbook.com

and yeah, it's nice to have a site. If you are asking for access to something, it's nice (essential!) to point them to a website that looks professional.

[Kirk Gittings]

i use a template from SiteWelder. For me its all about marketing and its quite effective.

FWIW, I know of one fine art photo magazine that simply will not review your work if you don't have a real website-no Flicker, Picasa or Smugmug.

[Greg Blank]

I have two both both domains are for marketing and are maintained by me as well. I don't use a template because templates I determined are somewhat non flexible for my purposes. I use to code all the pages, but of recent years I use a rather cool program called Sitegrinder that allows me to comp pages in Photoshop. You build the whole site from PSD files and can place the elements virtually anywhere on a specific page.

[Preston]

I have a site. Here are my answers to your questions...

"What is it for? Marketing or show and tell?" Both
"Is it visited much?" Traffic is steady, but not very high
"How much did or do you pay for it?" About $15/month
"Did you pay to have a designer create it or did you do it yourself?" I built it myself
"Do you see a benefit?" Yes. I've made some sales from the site, but it's nice to have a place where I can store images for use on forums and to show images to prospective clients.

I try to keep my site updated with newer work, as well keep older work available. I need to rebuild the site, mainly to make it easier to update and make it easier for folks to order and pay for prints.

My Site--in case you'd like to take a look-see.

--p

[Oren Grad]

I do.

It's primarily for my own amusement, secondarily for giving family and friends a place to see a sampling of what I'm working on, albeit virtually all small-format stuff (mix of negative scans and digital captures) rather than LF. I don't sell anything.

It's not visited much.

The cost is just the hosting price at Lunarpages, which is to say not much, a few bucks a month.

I created it myself. The site runs on the WordPress engine. I created the user interface "theme" by studying the HTML/PHP of an existing WordPress theme to see how it worked, then stripping it down to "bare metal" and rebuilding it so that the UI looked and worked the way I wanted. (Yay for open source!)

Lots of benefit: in general I've had great fun with it, and in particular it's given me a vehicle for continuing to work on new pictures even during periods when I haven't had the time and energy for much darkroom work.

[Robert Brummitt]

FWIW, I know of one fine art photo magazine that simply will not review your work if you don't have a real website-no Flicker, Picasa or Smugmug.

I saw the flip side of this, a gallery/reviewer stating they want to see "real" work and not CD's or links to your website. I can only think they do not want to bother being on a computer, the difference of transmitted verses reflected image or they want the photographer to do the footwork if you want to be shown.
I thought "Wo, that's pretty old school. I remember packing prints and shipping them."
Which brings to question what color format do you use? srbg, Adobe or Pro photo?
I have sent work to friends and seen how images look totally different.

[Greg Blank]

Any photo on a website should be Srgb.

I saw the flip side of this, a gallery/reviewer stating they want to see "real" work and not CD's or links to your website. I can only think they do not want to bother being on a computer, the difference of transmitted verses reflected image or they want the photographer to do the footwork if you want to be shown.
I thought "Wo, that's pretty old school. I remember packing prints and shipping them."
Which brings to question what color format do you use? srbg, Adobe or Pro photo?
I have sent work to friends and seen how images look totally different.

[Kirk Gittings]

I saw the flip side of this, a gallery/reviewer stating they want to see "real" work and not CD's or links to your website. I can only think they do not want to bother being on a computer, the difference of transmitted verses reflected image or they want the photographer to do the footwork if you want to be shown.
I thought "Wo, that's pretty old school. I remember packing prints and shipping them."
Which brings to question what color format do you use? srbg, Adobe or Pro photo?
I have sent work to friends and seen how images look totally different.

That makes sense because a gallery can only sell actual prints. To me that is kind of a separate question.

[ypres.bass]

I want to know how many of you have websites?
What is it for? Marketing or show and tell?
Is it visited much?
How much did or do you pay for it?
Did you pay to have a designer create it or did you do it yourself?
Do you see a benefit?
I'm asking for a feel of what is happening out there? I have an thought and I want to get a better feel about it. I chat with other photographs and they say, "Do you have a site?" or "See my work at www."
I don't have a site. I use flicker, and forums such as this and Facebook.
Love to hear what you have to say?

I have two sites - www.stanislavkolarik.cz and www.signovano.cz (designed yet)
+ DevArt, flickr, forums, facebook profile and FBsite
Reasons? Both
my average visits is 21.3 per day
I pay 180CZK per year for hosting and 200 for domain.
personal site myself, signovano by designer
without benefit, yet