I made a website! ...and now I have no idea what I'm doing

[jobush95]

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Edited April 7, 2020 by jobush95

[Tom H.]

Looks good on my phone. Lovely work. Will check it out in depth later on the big pc. Is it squarespace perhaps? Looks similar to my own as far as layout goes on mobile.

[Tom H.]

The pics took quite some time to load. What size jpeg are you uploading? I use 1500px and 72 dpi. That should be fine for web use. But my WiFi is spotty so it could just be my connection.

[jobush95]

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Edited April 7, 2020 by jobush95

[Tom H.]

@Tom H. I just checked your page, and oh my, HAHAHAHA that is so hilarious. Exactly same theme on squarespace! I can't stop laughing...

I uploaded my pictures in native resolution, albeit with moderate JPEG compression. Squarespace does their own resizing/optimization for display anyway, so I didn't put too much time and thought about that department.

I saw, but I think they are quite heavy while loading, your page is significantly slower than mine it seems. I export for web at 1500px long side, 72dpi and 70% in Lightroom, and that is a great medium between small size and still decent image quality while watching on a bigger screen. And I really dislike slow websites Even with a faster line, the galleries are still loading while I'm browsing. Not good... As far as design goes, well, who am I to complain?

 

Content seems fine too, some really nice images in there! I feel the travel and people sections may need some culling, or splitting in separate topics.

 

I'd split your biography into two side by side colums, one Korean, the other English. Makes for an easier read. Also, your bio is mostly about other people? I see what you did there, but half of it seems overly negative I feel. I'd move the focus of the text to yourself, and maybe mention your intentions to produce beauty from the ordinary only at the end.

 

Same for the contact page, two side by side colums, not the Korean/English overlapping.

 

Just my 2 cents. Cheers, Tom

[Tom H.]

I move my content that's not quite worthy of showcasing to a blog section. It's a good way to show recent work, without having to move it into a portfolio. One or two nice ones from each set, eventually might make their way into the front page portfolio that way. But a website is an ongoing project. I review mine from time to time, some stuff you might not like anymore months later...

[jobush95]

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Edited April 7, 2020 by jobush95

[mdm]

OK. You are buying some newspaper in a kiosk and your eyes caught by the bright magazine. You took it… National Geographic or something. Open and go through the pages.  There are loads of fantastic images surrounded by the crystal-white empty spaces. Not a single word. At all. Shit!!!

 

jobush95, your shots are very good but I’d like to hear a little story about the happenings. Maybe just a couple of sentences covering what’s going on, what’s force you to take that picture, your choice of focal length, A, ISO etc. I really miss it. I believe that a WEB-site like a good book is about to tell people that stories.

[Tom H.]

I don't mind the sentiment of trying to be unique and different. But two things bother me a little on how you phrased it.

 

First, there is nothing inherently wrong with being mainstream. To each his own, if others want to photograph in that way, it's their choice.

 

And secondly, and don't see this as a critique or insult, but I didn't see anything different about your photography to be honest. It's a nice collection of images, well taken, but not particularly artistic or special. But then again, I follow quite a lot of people online, and I can count the unique ones on one hand... I'm pretty sure I'm very mainstream, even if I try to be different... Nothing wrong with the sentiment and the intention, but it doesn't show yet in your work I feel. And even if it did, it's not something I would be saying about myself.

[Tom H.]

OK. You are buying some newspaper in a kiosk and your eyes caught by the bright magazine. You took it… National Geographic or something. Open and go through the pages. There are loads of fantastic images surrounded by the crystal-white empty spaces. Not a single word. At all. Shit!!!

 

jobush95, your shots are very good but I’d like to hear a little story about the happenings. Maybe just a couple of sentences covering what’s going on, what’s force you to take that picture, your choice of focal length, A, ISO etc. I really miss it. I believe that a WEB-site like a good book is about to tell people that stories.

I agree on clarifying the context somehow, perhaps splitting the galleries into smaller sections? Like "Italy", or "Street photography". But disagree on sharing how it was taken. People who know photography, can have a good enough guess. People who don't know, usually don't care. I only share technical data if it's relevant or a teaching situation. Never in a portfolio.

[jobush95]

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Edited April 7, 2020 by jobush95

[jobush95]

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Edited April 7, 2020 by jobush95

[Tom H.]

You clearly have a sense of where you want to go with your vision, so focus the bio on that sentiment. No need to mention other people, it's about you and your ideas.

 

Good luck, I'll check in from time to time to see how you're doing. Also, a great book on portraits is "Road to seeing" by Dan Winters. He also succeeds in bringing out something extra from his subjects, no matter the location or the technique used. It's a good read. Technique comes second to everything else, and light is light. It serves a purpose, and the subject determines the mood and the technique that is needed. I dabble in both, whatever the situation demands. Learning to light also made me a lot better at using and seeing natural light.

[olli]

Having just redesigned my own website completely and faced some of the same questions I'll chip in here as well.

 

Regarding design and layout I think that it is fine, as you would expect using squarespace. The nice thing for photographers these days is that we can create a website and personalise it using hosts like Squarespace and Smugmug (where I used to be) and Format (where I currently am). The only things I would say are that on the landing page first, I found the 'Gallery Main' link a little confusing in that it took me a moment out work out that these were links to individual galleries, and second, I clicked on the heading 'Welcome' expecting that it was a link to some kind of introduction to your work and was left wondering if it was a broken link.

 

With regard to the portfolio / galleries, I think we all have this problem of knowing how much is too much (or on some occasions) too little, and where to set the cut off point in terms of what is good enough and what just falls short. For me, I find that your galleries have too many pictures and I think it would be good as someone else suggested to create a more comprehensive arrangement of galleries or sub-galleries with fewer images. I'll confess that I end up flicking through the images rather rapidly once I get past the first 10-12 (though my own website galleries often have more than this too:) ). I think this also helps address the issue someone else mentioned of the lack of information regarding the images. I too prefer to keep this to a minimum and have a nice clean look and if your galleries are tightly focused then there is less need for explanation. I also deal with this by sometimes having the first element on a gallery page be a brief written piece on the theme of that gallery.

 

I've found that I tend to add and remove pictures from galleries from time to time depending on my mood, sometimes looking for a more tightly focused presentation, other times wanting something more expansive. The critical thing is that you need to be critical of your own images and given that we are often not good critics of our own work it is good to get opinions from other photographers you know whose knowledge and work you respect. Ultimately, though, you have to be the one responsible for the final decisions - it's your website and you have to be happy with it first and foremost.

 

I'm also going to agree with those above who suggested you need to rethink your 'About' section to make it less about what you think is wrong with contemporary photography and more about you and your own personal vision. For a point of reference you can have a look at my website to see how I approached it and if you think it's terrible you can ignore everything I've said.

[darknj]

I rather like it, the website look pretty and the picture are definitely nice, some of them are a tad off for my taste but I still globally like what you have done so far.

 

As what/how things are done, just do whatever you want. It's your own place after all. I rarely share my pictures because I don't feel like it while a colleague of mine put them up pretty much everywhere he can, at the end of day, it doesn't matter as we both enjoy taking pictures and what we do has to please us personally first.

 

Also going to rejoin Tom's on the small note but leave out the technicalities, when I look at a picture, I don't like seeing how it was taken, I just want to soak in the image and the moment, building up my own feeling of what is happening. I still remember an advice back from when I started this whole photography thing "Tell more by showing less", I rather like this advice and try to abide to it whenever possible.