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Hi,
I designed 3 portfolios on our website for this lesson. I learned more about using Zenfolio. My portfolios are Trees, Architecture and Landscape.
Here is the link for the Client Access Page:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/clients.html. Each portfolio has a different code using lower case letters, the access code is trees, landscape, or architecture.The second way is going to: http://www.cogan-cogan.com, on the Home Page, there is a drop down menu with Client Access, click and use the same access codes as above.
Hope you are feeling better,
Carolyn CoganOk here are some notes from looking at your site. The very first thing that I noticed was that I had to scramble to turn off my speakers. The volume on my computer was cranked but I wasn’t listening to anything and I was not expecting to hear sound.
As a general rule of thumb auto playing music on websites is a very very bad idea. If you want to include music of some kind give the user the ability to click play.
The second thing I noticed was the visitors count thing.
I would just use Google Analytics and not make your visitors number public. In this day and age of millions of youtube views even big numbers look small.
At that point I started to notice the photos.
I figured what I would do is a quick take on each image:
There are some prominently featured images like this one that are not very strong
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h68bc53d6
This image is heavily photoshopped and not really in a good way.This is a nice image:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h60144698This is not a good image because people want to see faces!
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h66111f66Stuff like this comes off as quite weird:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h680c3c81This is nice:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h68aced5dMore stuff that’s just too weird to feature on a “photography” site:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h661de0e5
(These may be better put into their own “abstract” section or something because at a certain point they don’t look like photos anymore)Don’t get me wrong this kind of experimentation is fantastic but it gets confusing for the viewer, IE am I looking at graphics, photoshop work, or photography?
This is the kind of nice image you want to showcase if you’re going for an abstract/simple style:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h64efb8e6This is very murky:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h666b17f9Nice:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h6b0db1e0Nice:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h6cef15daNot that interesting:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h6b1ce858Nice but needs something in the frame, not just sky:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h6569adc4Nice:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h68ad98efAgain with the faces here:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h637555abNot that compelling:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h6cc028a3THIS!!
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h6317f62c
Other than the crooked horizon this is a nice image with the wide aspect ratio and everything.This is good, it’s always good to use people in the foreground of images like this:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h6761284fThis is good:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h6a036290This is good but it’s underexposed a bit too much:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h6cf0a04a#h642ad689You’ve got some nice images there.
One main suggestion would be to pear down on the heavily photoshopped images and focus on your strong images, like your wide aspect ratio landscape photos and your scenery photographs.
The main thing to remember about this is that a website is like a garden it must be tended and weeds must be removed! Sometimes less is more so remove things you don’t think work.
Images like this should be feature more prominently:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h60144698#h60144698Images like this should either be removed or hidden in a less prominent position:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/p873317158/h60144698#h661de0e5I like that you’ve got your own domain name as well.
You can keep working on your website and your photography over the long run that way.
Keep playing and keep experimenting!
Thank you.
Hi,
Glad to get some feedback on our website. Some of the comments on the photos you looked at were my husbands.
I did make 3 portfolios, use this link, http://www.cogan-cogan.com/clients.html. and access codes for each portfolio are trees, landscape, or architecture.
In those client access pages are just my photos and not Jerry’s photos.
Thanks for the input.
Carolyn
Oh sorry about that!
I particularly like these:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/trees/h2b431247#h2b431247http://www.cogan-cogan.com/trees/h3938206c#h3938206c
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/trees/h3db0b09e#h3db0b09e
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/landscape/h315a69c1#h315a69c1
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/landscape/h295e4de8#h25ce056e
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/landscape/h295e4de8#h2531f45f
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/architecture/h2d26fd67#h2d26fd67
(this one could use some scale)http://www.cogan-cogan.com/architecture/h27d5bb65#h22f47f14
(this image could be better, remember all you viewer can see is what’s in the photography itself no matter how majestic the scene was in reality)Nice:
http://www.cogan-cogan.com/architecture/h27d5bb65#h3931e19eOverall you’ve got some nice images in here. I’d a bit concerned that the images are locked behind passwords though.
The google crawler can’t access them if they are hidden and people won’t be able to find them.
And if you don’t think that’s important look at how many of my images have been indexed by Google!
Keep adding images to your site and share them across platforms.
Hi,
Thanks, these are some of my favorites. Sunset Tree received a Bronze Award for Color Magazine Single Image Contest. Fall Fog was juried into a Photography Show in Denver, juror was Jay Dickman.
I used the Client Access for two reasons, one Jerry’s and my photos are combined on the site, second I learned how to use Client Access on Zenfolio in case we do wedding photography.
I will add the photos to galleries in our website.
Thanks for your comments.
Carolyn
If there is one thing I would recommend sort of at a higher level, it’s don’t be afraid to share your works with the internet at high resolution with no watermarks or anything.
You can take two stances with the internet and photography. One is to lock everything down, put watermarks on everything and hope people won’t steal your work. The other is to be open post high resolution images and be grateful that people think your work is good enough to steal.
The people who are going to steal your photos will steal them no matter what you do, it’s the people who need images and are willing to pay to license them that are the ones who benefit from sharing your works.
I get several emails every week from people wanting to license my images because they saw them on flickr or wherever.
I even go so far as to use creative commons non commercial licenses on my images.
This is a personal decision but I can tell you from experience that the internet likes openness and transparency!
Also, the internet is infinite so you can backfill your website with photographs that may or may never been seen by a human. Meaning add galleries deep in your website that aren’t totally up front and obvious in the main navigation but will get crawled by the googlebot.
Take a look at this to see what I mean, these are some of my photographs being indexed by google.
Anyway just a thought.
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