Thougths/advice needed about my new website

[slatermark]

Hi all,

I am a commercial/advertising photographer working in the North East. This is my first time posting in a forum so very new to it all.
My work is split between portrait and product work, I have been told if I want to take my work to the next level I need to be more specialised. It is this which I am hoping to get some help on.
I would really appreciate anyone taking the time to look at my site and give any advice on which discipline my strengths lie and if you agree that specialising in one field is this best way to go?
Also any website, portfolio critiques are welcome as I have just gone live with this new website.
www.markslaterphotography.com

Thanks,

Mark

 

[TheLibrarian]

Ill start off saying I know very little. It looks like you know what you are. Corporate, advertising, products and sport which ties into advertising.

Bearded guy, purple shirt girl and other fashion stuff seems like it doesn't belong there but isnt bad just maybe thats whats distracting you outside of your specialization. If advertising is tough to get into then fashion i'm sure you have to suffer until you get into Elle, Vogue or something but somebodies got to do it.

 

[slatermark]

Thanks for taking the time to check out my site and reply. Yes i think that is my fear that i might be trying to cover to many subjects under the advertising umbrella but then on the flip site get clients asking to see examples of more fashion style images.

 

[Dennis Bloodnok]

OK, I'll preface this reply with the statement that I'm not a website designer, so my opinion cannot be taken as expert.

I would agree with TheLibrarian that I think you already know your style and your photographic strengths. I'm not convinced you need to specialise more. However, I do think your website could cover that a bit better. When I went to your home page, I was already in amongst a large selection of your work, so it was not immediately obvious whether this was a commercial site, a talented amateur's portfolio site, whether these were all your photo collection or whether they were just a subset. On the other hand, the site has a really nice clean and simple feel so you're not distracted from the pictures by annoying design elements.

Personally, what I'd do is to create a separate home page that briefly introduces the site, and then encourages people to the photo gallery pages once they know what to expect. It's a bit like a "Hi, how are you?" before you walk through the door and look around. Once that's done, I'd say your separate "specialisations" will be easy to separate, and buyers interested in the different aspects will be able to navigate to their areas of interest really easily.

Does that make sense?

 

[BoldArtist]

I would use only one image on the main page when a person goes to the website. Such as the children swinging over the water with a nice sunset.

Also a lot of your work looks very stock in style.
Are you a stock model artist on the side?
People could buy those very cheaply online.