Some photography websites are too heavy and complex

I'm a member of quite a few photography forums. I've noticed that a lot of people post their sites on these forums and ask others for comments, suggestions, insights, etc. I happen to think this is a great idea and I suspect that these folks do get some good advice. One overwhelming item that I've noticed cropping up over and over again is the complexity of design and the size of the pages on some sites. These items often go hand in hand. I've seen some folks with 2 MB homepages and others that have some kind of Flash homepage that takes 30+ seconds to load. Additionally funky navigation (which many seem to feel is cool) can also interfere with the ability of search engine spiders to follow the links on your site and place your valuable pages in their searchable index (this depends how the nav is coded - sometimes it is ok sometimes it is not. There is a great little tool for checking page spiderability at http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/spider-simulator/).

This seems to be the age-old (or at least 10-12 years old!) dilemma of "artists" building websites. If an artist builds the site they can sometimes be so engrossed in making it look amazing that they forget about the usability. Whereas a purely technical guy may make the site very functional but it often doesn't look like much. I suppose a marriage of the two is best. I would strongly caution photographers from building websites that use copius amounts of flash (some can be ok if used correctly) and from creating very heavy (read page weight) pages. If a user can't load your pages in at least 5-8 seconds then you've likely lost them (faster is, of course, better). This can also be a function of your hosting company so try and make sure you get a good one - this is not easy (from my experience) but it can be done. You also may be thinking that page weight is no longer an issue because everyone uses broadband these days. Well, yes most folks seem to be using broadband now - but not everyone - I still have people visiting my site with dial-up. Also, even broadband can get a little slow when there is congestion. Ultimately, having someone being able to view your site - even without much in the way of fancy designs or features, is better than not having them look at it at all.

Sounds straightforward but it can be a little tricky when your business is related to images (which often make page weight a problem). The trick here is to ensure you optimize them for the web and you don't place too many on a page. There is a tremendous amount written about optimizing images for the web so I won't delve into that here. I also believe programs like Photoshop have some kind of "optimize image for web" features built in (at least I think they do - I don't presently use Photoshop).

Better ways to do image processing?

I am interested to learn what image editing software other photographers or webmasters are using. I have picked up different programs along the way but I may not be using the most efficient way to process images. I do not use Photoshop (I can hear the gasps now).

I use Lightroom to do cropping (if necessary), reduce image size, convert to JPEG (for small images) and convert ARGB to SRGB (for web images). I do not use Lightroom to modify colors/exposure/etc. This is the realm of the photographer (read “artist”). I believe the photographer has a much better eye for such things than I do. I receive photos that have already been adjusted.

For thumbnails I use a little program called Easy Thumbnails and for watermarking I use another freeware program. I suspect there are easier ways to do all this photo manipulation. Perhaps Photoshop does all this? I’m actually not sure. It would be interesting to hear what some others use to handle all these tasks. I’ve seen some output from Photoshop’s “save for web” feature and they look pretty good in my opinion. My getting a decent quality preview image for the site requires some trial and error – and, as a result, time.

What kind of photos are selling?

Probably one of the most important things for selling photographs is actually having the kind of photos people are interested in. I am wondering where any of this kind of industry information may be available? Granted if you are a wildlife photographer and you learn that photos of cell phones are popular it may not help you much, but if you learn that certain animal photos are much more in demand than others then this information could make a substantial difference to your sales.

I can already hear the artists groaning. I'm guessing that some will feel that this is not in the spirit of "art". Well, that may be true but if you have a web presence you are likely trying to earn some money at the same time as being an artist. Approaching this strategically can be a good idea - provided one doesn't feel too compromised I suppose.

I have recently posted breadfruit photos and sugar cane photos and the like on my site. I think that these are an example of putting up what one has but not necessarily putting up what the market is looking for. It is great for the site to have alot of breadth. I'm happy if people can find all manner of photos but at the same time I really should be focusing my limited time on photos that have the most selling potential. If I had unlimited resources then putting up all manner of photos wouldn't hurt but I don't have unlimited resources. As such I have to focus on "the low hanging fruit" - a lesson that was beaten into my during my 8 year stint in ecommerce (I'm sure there are quite a few other lessons that didn't sink in but that's another story). Seems I need to start practicing what I preach.

The gist of this ramble/discussion is if you know what photos sell, and if you are sales focused, then take those photos and get them up on your site. Not exactly rocket science. However, where can one get this information? I'm sure the big boy stock photo agencies have all sorts of metrics for their sites and business but I suspect they don't publish the information - or maybe they do? If photographers know what to shoot and agencies are better able to sell these photos then perhaps this information is in the public domain? If it is can someone please let me (and probably quite a few others) know where and how to access such information?

Scanning slides

I am now getting the photos from the photographer (Dave) in digital format. He has - in the last year or so switched over to a digital camera. It strikes me that digital is the way to go - at least from my point of view. I'm not sure if there are any purists out there that still feel slides are better for one reason or another.

However, much of the photographers previous work is in slide format. I suspect this is the case for many photographers. The agencies - it seems - used to do the scanning and photoshopping. Although I suspect some photographers in the past did this work themselves and as such have digital copies of their work going way back.

I am wondering what the best way is to get slides into digital format? I recently asked this questions on a photography forum and was told that today one can buy a Nikon scanner for about 1000 bucks which will do a professional job. Also, I was pointed to a site - http://www.scancafe.com/. Some folks have indicated that these guys do a very good job and the prices are also good. The only thing that would concern me here is that you have to send your slides to India (concerned about sending them anywhere for that matter). Isn't it a bit risky putting all your hard work into an envelope and sending it half-way across the planet. Also, at the other end what is to stop folks from making copies of your work? Perhaps I'm being a little paranoid? Would be interesting to hear what others have done with their slides or indeed if anyone has had any experience with scancafe.

Submitting to Yahoo! Directory

I submitted the site http://www.nunukphotos.com/ to the Yahoo! directory on June 12. Kind of freaked me out that they say you have to give them 299USD and they may or may not put you in the directory AND there is no refund no matter what. So far I've heard nothing. Does anyone else out there have any experience with getting into the Yahoo! directory? A friend of mine is in the directory but he says he got in years ago when it used to be free.

I have some bad experiences before with paying to get into a directory. Payed to get a Joomla site of mine into Best of The Web and they turned me down flat - saying I was a blog (which I was not).

I've also applied to DMOZ - as everyone says you should. I've heard this can take between 6 months and forever. Guess we'll just see what happens there. Anyone got any other ideas about "must be in" directories? I've heard business.com is good but it is another 299 and I don't really want to cough that kind of money up twice - at least until I can start earning some site cash.

Btw - I will post a few photos around the blog just to jazz it up a bit with some of the content that is on nunukphotos.