My first online portfolio!

M

mbiedermann

Guest
Hey Will,

- I liked your 'Street' and 'Nightlife' photos the best and particularly the 2 NY bridges at night. That picture is beautiful! Where did you take it from? You seem to have an eye for the streets of NY. The nightlife photos impressed me by their technical aspect more than their content.

- The other sections interested me less so could it be that you have a knack for photojournalism?

- Regarding the site, it leaves to be desired. For example, some of your pictures have a white border or white sides around them to make up for their non-standard shape. This distracts from the pictures themselves for those of us who don't have a white background in the browser.

- Also, you should remove the 'Landscape' section if you have no pictures to show yet.

- All in all, I really enjoyed that night picture of the two NY bridges. Thanks for that!
 
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leGreve

Full time photographer and film maker omnifilm.dk
Nov 6, 2010
308
0
Denmark
vimeo.com
One thing, and probably the most important thing (I have a hard time maintaining this myself...) is always to kill your darlings.

What do I mean?

Well, photographers in general have hard time getting rid of needless photos, because they somehow got attached to it, either because of the mood they were in during the taking of the photo or because something happened.
But I'm here to tell you, that if your photo doesn't have a commercial value, be very very strict in your selection.
Don't include something just because you think it's kinda cute or nice. If you for one millisecond is in doubt wether or not to include a photo... don't.

A portfolio is only as good as the worst photo included in it... sad to say, but it's true.
 
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W

WillM

Guest
mbeidermann, thanks i appreciate your comments. the first bridge image, of Brooklyn Bridge, is taken from a park area on the brooklyn side of the river. The second is of Williamsburg Bridge, again from the Brooklyn side, taken from the roof of the Hotel I stayed in.
I definitely feel that I need to work on my images more, and push them to a higher standard, I just wanted to make a website while I had some free time as I feel it will be useful in the future. The gallery script that I used, which is one of the nicer looking free scripts that I could find, requires all the images to be the same size for it to work, therefore the white borders are a requirement. What colour does the background appear for you?

leGreve, yeah i totally agree with you. for now, i just wanted to put up some content, and i am fully aware that most of the pictures that I have are not at the level that I want them to be at. gradually as I take better photographs, I will update the site with fresher, better material. But for now, i'm not too worried. I'm not in a position where i'm attracting visitors to the site from google or where ever, so yeah. thanks anyway!
 
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Background looked fine to me - white on white for size changes?

What I liked - (1)General simplicity of the look, (2)Photo transitions are nice

Some things to consider - (1)On my screen, with its reolution settings and 16:9 aspect, the slide transition buttons fall below the bottom of the screen which means I had to scroll down a little bit to see and click the transition arrows. If you can resize a bit to bring the bottom up, this would be alleviated. (2)Though I love the simplicity, you may want to include a bit of bio or contact info directly on the main screen (could be small and along the bottom or something.) Believe me, many people love my work and have expressed interest in buying, but because my phone or e-mail or something was not readily available to them, they let it slide by. This can also be done by having a simple intro/splash page which conveys the clean look and having a little more info on the pages once someone delves into the site.

I agree you should always be putting your best foot forward by eliminating anything which is not ruly your very best. Right now I wouldn't sweat it, just keep it in mind - you'll be moving images in and out regularly now that you have a site.

Don't forget to launch e-mail/text/facebook blasts when you add new stuff!
 
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C

Cornershot

Guest
Nice work and nicely presented. I really like the chair series. My advice is to resist the temptation to put too much up. So if you have three of the same diorama image but at different angles, only put the strongest of the three up. Unless there's a really good reason to put them all up like if you have some kind of narrative progression. It will give your portfolio more impact that way.
 
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