Website information

[TheJudge]

Fairly new to the site so forgive me if this has been discussed.

I am looking into a web site for my photography business. I would love for my clients to be able to access my site, and view the photos. In today's day and age, I do not want to provide some perv access to childrens photos for downloading and posting. Does anybody have experience or knows of a good photography based web hosting company?

I would love to know more about :
1: prevent unauthorized downloading
2: prevent view source ability
3: have a password system set up for parents to feel their kids pics are secure.....


Any advice, suggestions??


Judge

 

[MACollum]

You might want to look into flash. I'm certainly no expert at web design (I can only do pages with basic HTML) but many photographers are using flash pages to show their work. I *think* that people cannot take the pictures from a flash site (at least not MOST people, there may be a way for advanced users to get them). I could very well be wrong though :er:

As for pictures of children, I can't imagine why a pervert would want a picture of a child that is fully dressed and posed in a way suitable for children. It's my understanding that people who want pictures of children for unsavory purposes would want pictures depicting the kids in suggestive ways, which no respectable photographer would make anyway.

However, people taking the pictures off your site is a valid concern as many people will take pictures off websites that don't rightfully belong to them. There are scripts you can use to password protect pages, prevent right-click downloading and I think to prevent source viewing, however if someone knows what they're doing (and wants the pictures badly enough) they can bypass these methods. I'd seriously recommend hiring a web designer for a professional website to avoid these problems. That's probably the route I'll go if I go into business (though I need much more practice before that's possible).

 

[astrostu]

Yeah, unless your stuff is in a self-contained package, like Flash (which I personally strongly dislike), then there's no way that I know of to prevent people from downloading photos or the code. After all, in order to view the site, the client's browser must download the information from the server, and then the information is stored on the client's local drive and so completely accessible to them.

 

[Azuth]

Most things on the screen will happily fall prey to the "Print Screen" button no matter how you present them. If they can see the photo's then there is no fool proof method to stop people copying them.

Providing a password protected index or directory or area for clients is pretty easy however, so you can limit who can actually see the photos. The hosting company is not likely to be the issue here, anyone reasonable will be fine. It's the design of the site and the implementation of standard security that you will need.

 

[TheJudge]

Thanks for the input. A friend of mine who does coding for a local company here was telling me some web hosting sites offer that, some don't. He directed me to look for photographic specific web hosting to see if those offer the software to avoid rightclick, view source......etc.etc...

A second suggestion I was told was to save the copies on the site a specific size/pixel ratio so they can see it fine--- but reprints would be worthless. A final step was simply put a watermark across the web images and that should prohibit all but the very determined ( which no amount of security measures would stop anyway)

As for the pervs-- I just don't want to be responsible for providing a stalker or general perv access to others kids. Yes nothing I shoot would be considered an item they would want.......but then again I just don't understand how a person can be that way at all, and yet, they are out there... I think a password is a step in the right direction.....

Thanks again, I will post the URL once I find a good web hosting co.


Judge

 

[Alex_B]

any image you can see on the screen can also be stolen, be it flash or no flash ...

also flash-only pages are not a good idea to use as not all OS and browser combos will work with any flash.

 

[MACollum]

My only problem with flash is the loading time...I'm still on dialup, and I'm not the only one. Many people do have cable or DSL but then there's others for whom it's not available (my mom lives in a rural area and she can't get anything BUT dialup). Personally, I wouldn't want to lose customers simply because they didn't want to wait for the load times (some flash sites are EXTREMELY slow).

If it was me, I'd resize to a size just big enough for viewers to see the picture clearly but small enough to discourage stealing for print purposes. Some people don't like watermarks because they can interfere with overall viewing if they are placed diagonally. I can see this being a problem with portraits especially.

Shooting portraits will probably be done locally. If someone shows a real interest in hiring you, then you can arrange to meet with your prospective client to show them your portfolio, after they've decided your style is what they're looking for. I think your website is a good place to show off your personal style to clients, but they might prefer to see some in print too (a beautiful, glossy print can be hard to resist). It's not quite the same as seeing the pictures on screen.