Need help organizing my website

[nerwin]

So I've been working on my photography portfolio site and I just need some advice on how I should go about organizing it.

First things first, I am NOT looking for clients. This is simply a website to share my best work in a somewhat professional looking setup. I'm not trying to reach a certain audience. It will just a place of my own that I can send people to see some of my photos, contact info and social media. That's it.

Secondly - This website is built on Adobe Portfolio platform. So there isn't much customizing, but I did what I could to make the website look the way I want and function the way I want.

As you probably might know I'm a photographer who likes to take pictures of lots of different subjects so I'm really finding it difficult to create galleries on particular genres and populate them. But my best work seems to be landscape/nature so I having those two galleries were obvious.

When I do find myself in a urban environment, I've been known to take a good shot there so I created a urban and street gallery.

I also made a miscellaneous but that one just doesn't feel right to me.

I'm not looking to have 100,000 photos on my website and 500 galleries I just want a good selection of my best stuff work and I'm just having a hard time with it. All I wanna do is keep it simple.

Any help will be greatly appreacited.

So here's my site > Nicholas Erwin — Photographer

 

[Destin]

Following. I’m also interested to hear how others do this.

 

[waday]

I'm interested in this, as well.

The one thing I can say right off the bat is that I very much dislike the "miscellaneous" category. Some of the pictures in there are great, others are, no offense, not up to same quality as your others.

One thing that seemed to stand out to me in your misc album was that you could create two additional albums and remove the misc. One would be portraits, and the other would be abstract.

For the photos that don't meet the portraits and abstract (the flowers and lawn chairs that could go in wildlife and landscapes, respectively), I'd suggest changing your "Urban and Street" album to "Urban and Architecture". Then, all your pictures of buildings and cars can go into this album.

You do have a lot of automotive shots, which could have an album all on their own. I guess it comes down to your comfort level of how many albums you want and how wide of a definition you have for each category.

But, I'd nix the "misc" album. To me, it reads "crappy leftovers", which your pictures are not.

 

[Designer]

It's looking good! Way better than many posted on here. You can have a miscellaneous gallery, but you don't have to call it that. Think up a different name to call it. "Non-specified", or something like that.

Please link to the source where you got this, because others might want to do the same thing.

 

[nerwin]

I'm interested in this, as well.

The one thing I can say right off the bat is that I very much dislike the "miscellaneous" category. Some of the pictures in there are great, others are, no offense, not up to same quality as your others.

One thing that seemed to stand out to me in your misc album was that you could create two additional albums and remove the misc. One would be portraits, and the other would be abstract.

For the photos that don't meet the portraits and abstract (the flowers and lawn chairs that could go in wildlife and landscapes, respectively), I'd suggest changing your "Urban and Street" album to "Urban and Architecture". Then, all your pictures of buildings and cars can go into this album.

You do have a lot of automotive shots, which could have an album all on their own. I guess it comes down to your comfort level of how many albums you want and how wide of a definition you have for each category.

But, I'd nix the "misc" album. To me, it reads "crappy leftovers", which your pictures are not.

This is the advice I was looking for. Thank you very much, its help me out quite a bit. I knew the miscellaneous album didn't feel right and to be honest I literally just created that album in lightroom and just dumped the photos I wasn't sure how to categorize them.

The problem with the portraits and abstracts, I don't have many portraits that to me deserve to be on my website as I'm a noob when it comes to portraits since that's something I don't have a huge interest in but I'll think about it.

As for abstracts, I might have a few good ones that I could stand displaying on my site but I just don't know if I have enough to make look right.

Same thing with the automotive shots, I don't have that many car photos that are good enough for me to put on my website. I already had a automotive album and I didn't like it. But I maybe I need to spend more time in lightroom and finding the best shots.

Maybe I don't need 25 images to fill the whole page and maybe only a few is plenty enough. I'm not sure.

I also thought about making a projects page for groups images for things like my trip to mount washington and things like that. I could also put events on that page too. Just something I'm considering.

I don't want to have too many albums, 4-6 I think is plenty but because I do shoot many other things which is why the project page with additional albums might be useful.

 

[nerwin]

It's looking good! Way better than many posted on here. You can have a miscellaneous gallery, but you don't have to call it that. Think up a different name to call it. "Non-specified", or something like that.

Please link to the source where you got this, because others might want to do the same thing.

Are you talking about the website platform? If so, it's just Adobe Portfolio and it's parts of your Adobe CC Photography subscription if you subscribe. Not everyone seems to know that it exist, its still in its infancy but it's getting better and I've been working with them to help introduce new features. They've actually already implemented some of my ideas hehe.

 

[FotosbyMike]

To me it looks good! But as stated above I don't like Misc category I would use something like "Personal Projects"

 

[nerwin]

The biggest problem I'm having is I just don't how to figure which genre a particular image is.

Like for an example, I really like this shot but I have no idea what genre is haha.

 

[SquarePeg]

Really nice work! Great advice from @waday Exactly what I was thinking when I looked at your site. If you have to have a Misc/Other category, I like the Personal Projects suggestion or maybe just call it something kind of light hearted like Everything Else or Divergent or Falafel or even Exploring...

I would consider that last photo a landscape unless you had a bridge category.

 

[kap55]

Your site looks pretty nice - clean layout and good sized previews make it easy to view.

One thing that hurts my eyes is the momentary font change that occurs on your name (upper left corner) every time a category is selected from the menu.

 

[nerwin]

Your site looks pretty nice - clean layout and good sized previews make it easy to view.

One thing that hurts my eyes is the momentary font change that occurs on your name (upper left corner) every time a category is selected from the menu.

Unfortunately, that's nothing I can fix. That's just the platform it's built on. Hopefully that is something they'll fix but it is what it is.

HOWEVER! It does not occur in Microsoft Edge. So possibly it's a browser thing and compatibility with typekit fonts.

 

[Designer]

The biggest problem I'm having is I just don't how to figure which genre a particular image is.

Like for an example, I really like this shot but I have no idea what genre is haha.

You can just keep them in the "misc." gallery until you get 9 or 10 that are similar, then start a new gallery for that category.

 

[dxqcanada]

Hmm, if this is just a site to introduce yourself and have people view your images ... I wonder if the landing page should be more about you first ... the introduction that sets the stage for the images ??

 

[nerwin]

Hmm, if this is just a site to introduce yourself and have people view your images ... I wonder if the landing page should be more about you first ... the introduction that sets the stage for the images ??

I tried that once, I honestly didn't like it...I dunno, it just didn't feel right to me. Most already know I'm a photographer.

 

[Dave442]

It looks like a good start. I think there could even be a B&W category. I also think that the number of images could be knocked down a lot within each category. Where a lot of images works is where you are showing a subject that others are interested, i.e.: cars, buildings, trains, sports, etc. In your case the site is to showcase your best work. Sometimes it can help to have someone else curate for you. As the photographer, you know things about each piece of work that can make it very difficult to remove. Often the removal is not because the image is bad, it just does not add to current presentation.

So one goal could be that instead of adding more images, try and remove one image in each category each week this month (starting with the duplicated dragonfly). Later I think you could add some categories and start putting some of the pulled images back in along with some new work.