So since I’ve been taking pictures for years, including some paid jobs, I thought I should have a proper website for it – comments and criticism gratefully received, I know I’m especially rubbish at writing promotional blurb 😉

http://www.catchingphotons.co.uk

Cheers!

Big thumbs up from me.

Nice stuff, quite a niche you’ve got there. I’ll forward your details to a mate who works in the world of photos and video of a rather large Spanish construction company, see what he says.

Lots of waffle when I would rather look at the images in galleries that are easy to navigate and then just a short bit about the kind of work you do. The background is a bit distracting
(all IMHO, and I’m not a prospective client)

And ‘catching photons’? Is everyone going to get what that means?

Nice photos and a good niche, but I don’t like the site: it looks dated.

MrSmith – Photons are beams of light. Catching Photons = taking photos. Very clever name, I like it

Some fascinating images in there. In a good way.

The website doesn’t match the quality of the images though. I take it you done it yourself? It’s not horrible to look at. Appears to be built in a WYSIWYG editor using tables – not great for search engines, accessibility, flexibility, etc… Seen a lot worse though.

One thing, is that aside from the strapline (which is an image and won’t be picked up by search engines), it doesn’t really go into what you do. It describes what you photograph, but not really what you can offer people.

Try to think about what people will be looking for. What would they search for. And bang those key words into your descriptions. But I’d also add a page, not so much showcasing your photography, but just giving an outline on what you can provide. You DO kinda d this in your descriptions, but no one is interested in what YOU do….they want to know what you can do for THEM. If that makes sense. Most people don’t want to (and won’t) read all that crap. You generally have a second or two on the web to capture someone’s attention, so a couple of very short highlighted sentences or bullet points are sometimes a good idea, and maybe a page with a very simple outline…Hi, I’m Ben, I can make your life easier by taking photos for you…and here’s how, in very simple terms…rest of the website can go into details.

I’d agree with butcher. The images are really great. The website is not. I’m not saying this just for the sake of being nasty but it is really really lacking in pretty much every area.

I’d say start by looking at what is out there – by looking at popular sites you can see tried and tested solutions to varying design problems in web building.

What was it built using? The green is nauseous and doesn’t match the photographs. Everything is left aligned with a large patch of nothing on the right – very odd – people will think the site is broken. The photos on some of the pages are stretched. Not enough photos on the site, and they are presented badly – cannot full screen or zoom them etc.

Again ill reinforce my opening sentence by saying that as harsh as this may sound, it’s purely because I know you can improve this site loads, and just remember that you are designing a site to promote your photos – you are not building a site to be a work of art in itself, it has to be functional and simple, but in a style that shows you know what’s what.

unfortunately, at the moment it looks like a site from the mid 90’s and isn’t going to impress clients or photography fans.

I’d reassess how you are building the site and why. Did you use html and apache? Or was it an online site builder? Give me some more info and I can give you some more specific advice 🙂

Cheers for that – it was chucked together in Fusion, so nothing fancy. 🙂

So less waffle, more images? I was taking that companies would like to know more detail, but perhaps not – can always discuss stuff like that by email.

Lightroom has some web gallery stuff that looks pretty clever – I might look into that. The site name is a bit of an accident – I got the domain years ago, should it be something more directly descriptive (bencooperphotography.co.uk)? Or does the unusual name make it more memorable?

Thanks…

As in netobjects fusion?

If I was in your shoes – I’d start a v2. Do you have photoshop? If not, print a screenshot out of your current site – all the pages, and go to pen and paper.

Drawing skill means 0 in this case so don’t worry about how good it looks, but mess around with layouts.

Look around at what everyone else is doing as well, because whilst you want something individual, you need to know what the pro’s are doing – because they understand what works for your target audience. Have a look at the smashing web design site for some ideas.

As a basic rule of thumb, I would advise that for the home page, you go like this:

logo/site title center or left aligned.
—————————————
<break>
—————————————
Menu – aligned to match logo – nice spacing between letters and words
—————————————
Revolving image gallery (auto plays)(large – 800 wide minimum)
—————————————
Grid of 3 across x 2 down of images with links and captions.
—————————————
Second navigation menu at the bottom with Terms, Contact, About

Ditch the background image, but that list above is how an effective photo portfolio site is stacked in modern websites. It’s effective, clean and coherent. On the menu you want to keep your sections for different types of photography, and when people go to those pages, you want clickable, zoomable, high quality images and enough of them, laid out in a beautiful grid with appropriate margins. You also want some blurb about that section of photos, but this is secondary to the images, so don’t let it interrupt the grid.

Do those for all and you have a great base onto which you can apply your subtle personal choices in colour, font use etc.

You can use an image for the background, or a neutral coloured texture. If you are using an image, don’t cover the entire website – do half, either the top to provide some contrast for your logo / title to go over the top of, or at the bottom to provide a line beneath which the grid begins. Use a subtle image, but dark images can be used with a transparency to create a nice texture that does not distract from the images.

At least that is how I would go about designing your site If I was working on it today 🙂

Keep it clean, the beauty should be in the detail, and a careful approach to choosing margins, fonts and a very subtle use of colour – because your photography is doing the talking, the website’s just delivering the message.

Edit: keep catching photons, but use a sub title like you have – commercial photography by Ben Cooper. Catching Photons is a brilliant domain, and one you shouldn’t let go of.

I would be temped to remove the link to your urbex stuff. Although it’s hugely interesting some customers may think that you might take the chance to sneak into their sites with friends later when you shouldn’t

Likin the photos though

So less waffle, more images? I was taking that companies would like to know more detail, but perhaps not

Keep the detail, but don’t make anyone read it to get to the basics. Outline the basics, then they can read the detail if they want.

Lightroom has some web gallery stuff that looks pretty clever – I might look into that. The site name is a bit of an accident – I got the domain years ago, should it be something more directly descriptive (bencooperphotography.co.uk)? Or does the unusual name make it more memorable?

Imagine someone recommends a Ben Cooper who does photography: what do they search for? It’s not a deal breaker, but on the web, often simple is most effective.

As for the galleries, personally I’d like to be able to view the images in a larger format, so some kinda plugin might be helpful.

FWIW I’m not sure I would try and handcraft this sort of site any more. Better to pay for a service like SmugMug (60usd.year) which you can customise but where they understand and do all the hard work of making it mobile compatible and SEO friendly (e.g. they create a slightly different view for Google with better Alt text and descriptions to make it easier for Google to work with). We use them and can currently find around 8000 of our images in Google image search.

For what you have right now I would:

1. Improve the Alt text. ‘Steelworks 500’ is interesting but not descriptive. Google needs descriptions

2. Put your address/phone number at the bottom of the page to help Google locate you. That will help you get picked up by local search.

3. H1 tags round the titles of each page e.g. ‘Panoramic photograph’. This helps the Google know what the page is about

You’ve got to do lots of this stuff to really get noticed which is why I think is better to go with some sort of service like Smugmug, Zenfolio etc. where they have done a lot of the work for you already (there is still a good bit to do though 🙁 )

I’d use smugmug as an extension of the website and a way of channeling more users to the site, rather than pretending it’s a website – it’s not. It’s a photo sharing, social platform. Use it with all your other promotional accompaniments, flickr, facebook, twitter etc.

But I don’t think it gives the impression you want to give to your clients. But like Leffeboy says – it all depends on what you want to do.

Don’t forget that netobjects fusion can do SEO and lot’s of other plugin stuff too, you don’t have to use smugmug for that. I’d argue that smugmug is very much aimed at hobbyists, and thus gives that image.

I suspect it is the other way round, smugmug tends to have more pros as it it a paid service, especially since it is really set up to sell photos rather than just share them. Some of the pro sites set up using it look fantastic but I agree with everything else you say, especially since the object here isn’t really to sell and I do like you do, use smug mug as part of a main site. It is very easy to set up though

this site has the right idea, whatever user/navigation foibles that may irk a few designers are negated by the strength of the well seen and produced imagery that clients will expect.
http://www.rakusen.co.uk

you are currently in the middle ground between amateur and wanting to sell to a professional industrial market (i presume that’s why you are making a separate website from your urban-X) you need to separate the 2, have a proper website and maybe invest in a few lenses, not everyone wants wide angle shots with converging verticals 😉

I do have a wide range of lenses – but should probably have a wider range of images on the site not just wide-angle stuff 😉

Playing about with LR galleries – can do something nicely minimalist with big pics and a slideshow, with a little descriptive text, I’ll have a go with that.

this site has the right idea

Agreed. The spacing between the menu, the content and the information at the bottom made me want to vomit though lol :p

Okay, as a very quick and dirty test, how’s this:

http://catchingphotons.co.uk/test/

Problems I can see are that it’s in Flash, and I can’t include the explorable panoramas. But maybe have something like this inside a HTML wrapper with menu bars?

Thanks 😉

I’ll be honest with you, compared to your photos the site is pretty poor.

That said, I think you have a great eye and some fantastic images. I used to work in fashion and advertising photography, so know decent work when I see it.

If you are looking to get more paid work, I’d suggest using a template or paying someone to make you a site.

Quick google search found this:

http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2012/10/wordpress-photography-website-templates.html

To me it gives the impression that you’re someone who is more interested in taking great photos than in wasting time and money fiddling around with your website.

For that reason, I’d hire you.

Plenty of time to get a pro to refine the site when the bigger contracts start rolling in 🙂

In the meantime I might be tempted to strip it back even more – get rid of the background image, reduce word count by up to two-thirds, bring the images up even more front-and-centre.

Let your proposition and work speak for itself. “I take photos like this. Here’s my number.” Boom.

Just my humble opinion, it’s not like I do this for a living or anything.

Good luck.

Cheers guys – is the test site any better? http://catchingphotons.co.uk/test/

Much better, but still not good enough IMO.

Much much much better! Don’t like the dark though. Make it a light neutral colour!

For that reason, I’d hire you.

Unfortunately that’s not how clients see it. They know a good website when they see one and they expect a photographer to understand and appreciate that too. It’s your image online, and as the old saying goes first impressions are important, a website is no different.

Now work on tinkering with the layout a little, and improving fonts etc. I think you would benefit from a menu and some more pages for the different types of work you do.

Keep going! 🙂 Seriously though, that is so much better than the old one haha, that’s a really impressive improvement. It took you what? 5 hours max? Think what it will be like if you spend a few days on it. Good man for taking everyones advice without taking it to heart as well.

We have a saying at work – kill your darlings. (design darlings not members of the family :p) because 9 times out of 10 any emotional attachment distorts your perspective and stops you from making the decisions/changes you need to make.

Cheers, yes – mostly tinkering about with Lightroom plugins and the like!

Okay, last attempt for tonight – I’ve updated the test version:
http://catchingphotons.co.uk/test/

Still needs work, but hopefully the gallery is better – and this version doesn’t use Flash.

Are you sure? On the iPad a message pops up saying ‘this site needs flash’ 🙁

Edit: I take that back – it works now

Had me worried for a minute there 😉

I think your photos are fantastic and your explanations of how & why you deal with different photographic challenges make me believe that you’ve some real expertise which would be worth paying for.