So you've all flamed my website…

I’m currently re designing the site anyway to incorporate more features and update images and the text.

What do you think would be good to use on the website?
Colours? What background, font colours ect… ?

You’re the creative one, aren’t you? You should know these things. 🙁

Eh ?.

Guys – help him out!

GEt someone to proof read – you had a grocer’s apostrophe in a few places I saw

you should just come straight out, and ask/order someone to design it for you. That always goes really well 😀

Actually, as the site is showcasing photographic images, strip it right down and keep it as simple as possible, so as not to detract from this. Flat colours, minimal simple navigation. Simple typography. Lose the hideous fussy fonts and just use Helvetica or something

Link to the site again would be useful – not everyone read that thread 🙂

Obvious suggestions are:

– Get the text corrected
– Text, not pictures of text (aside from anything, google will miss it all in its results since it won’t be able to read your text)
– Good quality pictures
– Colours/fonts – look at some other sites, find ones that you think look good and use that as a starting point. Ditto fonts. Simple and clean is better though IMO.

http://www.jbmtbmedia.co.uk/www.jbmtbmedia.co.uk/Home.html

second look at opther sites for people doing the same thing you are that you believe are succesful. Try and work out what it is about their site that’s contributing to that success. Copy the best bits.

Don’t reinvent the wheel, set up a WordPress site and install a portfolio theme you like.

URL of just http://www.jbmtbmedia.co.uk/ for the home page?

I would go and get an off-the-shelf Portfolio site or WordPress theme that already looks 90% of what you want and then tweak.

There are loads out there that will look a lot better than what you have and also take a lot of the pain out of it, so that you can concentrate on getting the best photos on there.

Just one word of caution – browse a reputable site for these as there is a lot of malicious code in ‘Free’ sites and themes.

fix that mess of a URL

Get a proof reader. Fast.

Make sure your samples and portfolio are easy to get at and given prominence.

Guys – help him out!

I thought I was. Here is a guy who wants to set up his own business doing wedding photos and videos using his artistic flair, but doesn’t even have the most basic grasp of what to ask for in web design.
Shouldn’t he have got some ideas from other web sites and brought something to the table?

Comic Sans goes well everywhere I feel.

Seriously just use a WordPress gallery theme. Lay folk won’t know its a boggo theme adopted by you, only web developers will.

Or how about adopting tumblr or or such “social” type platform to make a more informal showcase.

hook up with a local printer to offer prints too. not many folk will want to go and find their own printer to get their wedding shots done.

your company name is annoying, as is the logo/font choice.

I do think you need to review your portfolio pictures too, tbh.

Yep get a better portfolio selection and let folk click on the images in the portfolio to see larger versions.

WordPress and a decent theme 🙂

My mate is a professional photographer, he also likes to ride on his mountain bike 🙂
Here is his site: Look under sport for some biking photos ;)[/url]

Forget about the website and spend some time learning your craft. Your pictures were not very good even for a competent amateur. That doesn’t mean that you should not pursue it as a career but if it is what you want to do then spend some time honing your skills/get some training before trying to entice people to pay you for your services.

a) Get someone, even employ someone, to at least proof read (and ideally edit) your copy. There are some inexcusable grammar and punctuation mistakes in there.

b) Sort out the URL.

c) Lose the pointless home page.

Shameless plug – if you need help with a), mail in profile.

You seem to have created images of all your text and loaded those onto the site, eg your about page is largely made up of this image;
http://www.jbmtbmedia.co.uk/www.jbmtbmedia.co.uk/About_files/Screen%20shot%202012-01-31%20at%2017.07.36.jpg

When you’ve saved the image the JPEG compression has caused the text to have a slight blurriness to it rather than looking all clean and sharp.

I’m no expert but I thought displaying your pictures on a black background didn’t show them to best effect.

Your portfolio page – the pictures on it are incredibly dark. If I stumbled across your page when looking for a photographer I’d think you were an amateur, and not a very good one at that. It’s harsh, but there are lots of talented photographers out there.

Forget about the website and spend some time learning your craft. Your pictures were not very good even for a competent amateur. That doesn’t mean that you should not pursue it as a career but if it is what you want to do then spend some time honing your skills/get some training before trying to entice people to pay you for your services.

Personally I agree with this, and if you can: get an apprenticeship or help out with a professional photographer, unpaid if necessary. Learn where to stand at weddings, what the money-shots are, what lenses you need and when…

Another good thing to do, would be to volunteer as a Photographer’s Assistant with someone locally whose work you admire/respect.

They may not take you on (especially for a wedding), but if they do, the experience would be incredibly valuable.

As others have said – keep looking at wedding portfolios (or whatever other business areas you have) and try and work out what it is about them you like. Then work out how to achieve the same.

Even fairly straightforward wedding photography costs about £1000 these days so it’s worth doing right. I did an ‘alternative’ wedding for free last summer and it was much more stressful than I’d imagined. I can see why a pro would have to charge £1000 (including all the post-processing etc.

I converse a lot with this guy on another forum. Lots of good ideas for what makes a stunning photo imo:
http://www.guycollierphotography.com

Joining a local photography club can be great too – they are a real eye-opener when it comes to critique (even compared to STW!). You’ll learn fast.

Quick feedback – font is horrible, portfolio is horrible. Have a look at some profesional sites for ideas. Yours looks like it was knocked up in a student bedroom. (sorry)

I know nothing about websites or design, but for some reason, either white on black, or the font or a mixture of the two, that site is so hard to read, it gives me a headache. It’s the only site I’ve ever looked at that which does that, so it may not be my eyes…

Yours looks like it was knocked up in a student bedroom

not a design student though…

My mate is a professional photographer, he also likes to ride on his mountain bike

I liked the washed out/overexposed effect on the boxing pics. 😉

Good on you for seeking advice.

As a layman, with no knowledge of marketing/web design and so on, but being brutally honest, everything below the top inch of your homepage puts me off. Lose the twitter/facebook things, and the CRC advert, and the other advert. They make it look cheap.

Here’s my cousin’s website http://www.reel-vision.co.uk/%5B/url%5D for you to peruse.

do you even get money from CRC for the banner ad?

I’m not sure that people should be colluding to improve the website.

The unlikely, but possible, outcome is that somebody hires the guy.

I’d suggest rather than trying to run what amounts to a scam 4xJohn faces up to his limitations as a photographer at this stage and does something about that.

Imagine how you’d feel if they were your wedding photos.

I would add more than just your email, for your contact details too.

I’d suggest rather than trying to run what amounts to a scam 4xJohn faces up to his limitations as a photographer at this stage and does something about that.

Dont want to be neg. to the op, but he has a point.

“Suggesting areas that could be improved” != “flamed”

My first thought on opening the home page was – What is this site for? All I saw was a banner for CRC and some facebooky logos.

The homepage needs to show what you do and what you’re trying to promote. In a glance. Showcase your work on it.

Like others have said, the font just doesn’t work, and I’m not convinced by the black background.

Good on you for trying, and seeking feedback, but I think you need to take a glance around sites from other people in the same field, and see what they’re doing and how they are attracting people in.

Read this, it was the first site that popped up when I Googled “how to design a website”.

1) Fix the URL, the double address thing doesn’t look terribly professional

2) Proof read the site as there are a lot of errors on there

3) Fix the layout and content of the front page – at the moment it’s a huge black void with a menu bar/advert/social network links at the top and an advert at the bottom.

4) Your logo looks like it says ‘JB MYB Medla’. You might want to consider something more legible

5) Put up only your best work. Some of your photos, particularly the wedding ones, look a bit point-and-shoot rather than professional

6) Not sure how seriously you’re taking the portrait/wedding photography thing, but if you are heading in that direction I’m assuming you’ll also have exposure meters, reflectors, etc. which should be listed on the equipment page.

7) Split your portfolio into sections. If I’m looking for a wedding photographer, I want to see a range of photos from weddings, not random landscapes. I want to see a range of photos from the same wedding, so I know that you don’t turn up, take hundreds of photos but only four of them are any good. Also, allow the viewer to look at enlarged versions of the photos in the portfolio, because it’s really hard to see the quality from a small image.

8) Same goes for the videos. If I’m looking for someone to video my wedding, I’m not interested in seeing mountain bikers, particularly not shakey bike-cam footage.

9) Sort out your fonts. You’ve got bold text on most of the pages that looks weirdly blurry on my monitor, and the header fonts varies from page to page (most seem to have the same font as your logo, but the Events page has a serif-Times New Roman-ish header)

10) Sort out your layout – the text varies across the pages from being left justified on most to centred on another.

11) Rainbows, googley eyes and spokey dokeys. You know it makes sense.

Dear god – every page is a giant image… that’s not going to do anything for your SEO.

As a professional web developer I would suggest you to find someone who knows what they’re doing to help you get the site into some kind of usable state. As someone suggested, you can go a long way with a WordPress install, a decent theme, and a bit of tweaking to personalise for your business.