New Website, Please Critique

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Robin Camp
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p.1 #1 · New Website, Please Critique

Hey all FM'ers, If you have a moment please check out my work and my website at www.dancingwithlightphoto.com and tell me what you think. This is my first website, so I welcome any advice and or criticism.

PS hope this was the right place to post this, advanced apology to the moderator if its not.

Thanks!

Robin

Edited on Jun 27, 2009 at 07:02 PM · View previous versions

Jun 27, 2009 at 06:46 PM

fotodik
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p.1 #2 · New Website, Please Critique

it would probably help if you spelled it correctly . please note you're missing a "t"

Jun 27, 2009 at 06:54 PM

Robin Camp
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p.1 #3 · New Website, Please Critique

Thanks for the catch! Gosh I never thought I would miss having and editor looking over my shoulder. Anyways appreciate the catch.

Jun 27, 2009 at 07:02 PM

davenfl
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p.1 #4 · New Website, Please Critique

If your intent was to use this to generate business your phone number, city and state would be nice, don't see that anywhere.

Jun 27, 2009 at 07:03 PM

Kevin Sherman
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p.1 #5 · New Website, Please Critique

Ah!! Papyrus?! *sigh*

Jun 27, 2009 at 10:37 PM

Ty Holland
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p.1 #6 · New Website, Please Critique

Looks good. You may want to think about moving your "Featured Galleries" to another page. People do not like to scroll.

Ty

www.thephotomafia.com

Jun 28, 2009 at 12:51 AM

mdude85
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p.1 #7 · New Website, Please Critique

What is the purpose of your gallery called 'Professional'? I thought all your photos were supposed to be professional.

Jun 28, 2009 at 07:34 PM

ComSoup
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p.1 #8 · New Website, Please Critique

Straight up critique:

1. Overall layout looks cheap and unprofessional.

Solid black background
Poor key image at top of page
Use of the Papyrus font is a no-no, as it looks cheesy.

2. The SmugMug face icon that shows up in the address bar makes your site even more "cookie cutter."
3. SmugMug's Flash gallery looks cheap in my (and most other's) view.
4. You have empty galleries.
5. There are repeated shots in different galleries (like the "gypsy" ones).
6. What's with the "professional" gallery? Another poster above mentioned that issue.
7. Most of the shots are straight up dull and uninteresting, especially in the "professional" gallery.
8. If you're going to offer web-page and graphic design services, then your skills definitely need to improve. Using a SmugMug built site to say you design Web pages is ridiculous.

Jun 28, 2009 at 07:51 PM

k7xd
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p.1 #9 · New Website, Please Critique

I opened it up and all I saw was a smug mug icon in the middle of the screen.
Is it supposed to do anything else?

Jun 29, 2009 at 01:27 AM

ScottME
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p.1 #10 · New Website, Please Critique

k7xd wrote:
I opened it up and all I saw was a smug mug icon in the middle of the screen.
Is it supposed to do anything else?

Yeah - pictures load above that.

I second the dislike for the font, as well as the color. And black background.

Jul 01, 2009 at 09:27 PM

regish
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p.1 #11 · New Website, Please Critique

ok here we go.

Don't put galleries if you don't have anything in them. (the hs sports one).

You want to charge 600 for a weeding, you spent 1000s on camera equipment but you don't want to pay $50 for a real hosting? There is plenty of free gallery software around to manage your galleries. get a real hosting company.

You paid for a domain name , use it for your email address. contact@dancingwithlight.com is a lot better than dancingwithlight@exchange.net

Sort your galleries out. Not sure a chick with a sword as anything to do in a wedding gallery. and you have a gallery named event but when i clic on professional (which it is true doesn;t mean anything) i get a photojournalism and event gallery? WTH?

Specialize more. Do you want to do event,wed design or weddings? pick one.
You can have a gallery for each but if i am looking for a wedding photographer and i look at your site all i see at first is a guy crashing his car, guys crawling in mud etc...
and i leave.

the photo you choose for the title is a little strange. again you need to cater to the people that will buy from you. if you decide to go after the Goth people it is good, regular people looking for a wedding photographer not so much.

Create a brand around you. put a picture of yourself on the website maybe even with your wife and kids, make yourself the good family man (if you are obviously) give your clients what they want. You are not selling pictures, you are selling memories, and you want to build trust right away.

You will want to get the phone number or a way to contact you always on the page. if people need to scroll in a galleries make it a vertical scrolling or in a separate frame.

The color scheme is dreadful. you obviously want to sell wedding and portrait (since there is no info on getting you for an even on your contact page.) make the website a pastel one. look at what other high end photographer do don't ripoff but get idea from them.

Jul 08, 2009 at 03:42 PM

Brit-007
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p.1 #12 · New Website, Please Critique

I do not think it works. You need to have different pages rather than scrolling down for different albums. As other posters say, you do not want to mix sports with weddings and portrait.

Personally, I would not have a gallery combining Glamour and Wedding. They need to be seperate. A simple website and effective would be to have the different tabs accross the top on every page. Keep things simple for the intended audience.

Jul 08, 2009 at 10:55 PM


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