March 2016 - Page 4 of 5

Smugmug and online portfolios

March 12, 2016/in blog, guests/by Frank Doorhof

SmugMug, Advantages of a good online portfolio

“Why It’s Important to Have a GOOD Online Portfolio”
Ask yourself, when was the last time you checked your online portfolio. Sometimes you get caught up in your work, upcoming shoots or just with life in general. If you haven’t checked, updated or modified your portfolio in a while, you may want to go and look at it, I try to update my portfolio at least once a week, but my website is updated almost daily with new images, stories and reviews. You have to make sure people come back and back and back… especially in a time where there is so much competition online it’s important to keep people engaged and willing to check out your site.

Together with SmugMug we created this blogpost for you to try to help you out to create a better online presence.

Having a great portfolio is more than just a few shots you love. It’s how potential collectors can find your art, clients can determine if you have the right aesthetic to portray their brand, and how you can build a following. In my opinion a good portfolio is also not a “garbage” place where you “dump” all your shots, only post the once you REALLY love, or better the ones everyone loves and keep the rest for social media or your blog. You don’t want bad images on your portfolio.

Here is a basic checklist to help optimize your portfolio and ensure your best foot is forward.

Homepage:

Contact – Can visitors contact you with information on it or within 1 click?
Navigation to galleries – Do you have an easy and clearly labeled ways to find your work?
Looks great on multiple devices – Try looking at your site and portfolio from a desktop computer, mobile phone and a tablet. Does everything display nicely?
Bio – Is there a bio or about us page to walk through your services and help visitors learn more about you and your studio?

If the answer to any of these is no, you may want to use a different template or see how you can add these navigation features to your website.
(side note: If you’re on a mobile device, make sure the phone number on your contact page is click to call.)

Galleries:

Ease of use – Can people scroll through your galleries and go back to the main gallery page to look at another one?
Variety – Are the main types of work you focus on represented and in properly labeled galleries?
Level of work – If you sell prints and exclusives for collectors, are these labeled?
Updated – Do you have your newest and bestselling shots available and have you removed ones that get little to no engagement?
Shopping – If you allow photos to be purchased, can they shop from the photo or from the gallery? Can they add shots to their cart from it?
Social sharing – Can visitors share your work on social sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter?

Checkout process:

Ease of purchase – Is it easy to find a shot, select what to print on, add it to their cart?
Multiple devices – Can you shop easily from multiple devices like a phone, desktop or tablet?
Upsells and cross sells – If you know people normally buy a print on metal and also on a coffee mug, is there a way for you to cross promote the other product? Can you send a follow up email saying it’s also available on XY items since you know they normally sell together?

Contact page:

Make sure your contact page has the right information. If you have separate contact information for clients, corporate customers or shoppers, label them differently. All contact pages should have the following.

Phone number – So potential clients and customers can call.
Email – Do you check this regularly and is it up to date?
Location – Your studio or where they can reach you for a shoot or visit.
Map – If you have subjects, models or clients, include an interactive map so they can find you.
Form – If they don’t want to email, include a contact form.
Social Media – If you’re active on social media, build a following from people who want to contact you from this page.

A good and easy to use portfolio can be the difference between new customers, more clients and gaining exposure. That’s why we prefer and recommend SmugMug. SmugMug websites are built for and by photographers. Their designs are designed to quickly and clearly display your work. You have full ecommerce solutions with partnerships to let visitors buy prints on more than 1,000 products (no need to stock inventory) including wall art on canvas or metal. Now don’t get me wrong, there are many other solutions out there that also work and offer similar options, but for me personally SmugMug just worked the best and gave me the best performance and design options, plus I LOVE their storage option, you can backup a LOT of material online via them all within your plan.

Also important for some companies is that SmugMug gallery options also enable you to share privately with clients, sell exclusives to collectors and let your fans pick their favorite shots and purchase them on items like coffee mugs. The best part about using SmugMug for your portfolio is that everything is drag and drop so you do not have to code to have a great looking website and portfolio, especially if you need something fast and easy…. well it just saves time and makes the difference between “I still have to do this but I don’t have the time”, and “Ok let’s do this quickly and get it over with”.

Now I know you guys love deals, so we tried to get something cool for you.
Because of our relationship, they’ve offered us a 15% discount for our website visitors to save on any SmugMug package. Click here to save 15% on any package.

Your online portfolio is how others will see you. It determines if you get bookings, make sales and land a dream client. That’s why you need to have it optimized. Use the checklist above and also try out SmugMug. It doesn’t take long and can make a world of difference for your business.

Some quick results from Imaging days

March 10, 2016/2 Comments/in blog/by Frank Doorhof

We are just back from Belgium where I did a three day demo for Sony on their booth.
During these demos I always try to throw in as many tips and techniques as possible, because let’s be honest specs of a camera you can read in the manual.

Today some quick samples from those days.
Model and Styling : Nadine
Assistant : Annewiek

Amityville visit

March 8, 2016/in blog/by Frank Doorhof

I love movies and whenever we travel we always try to find something interesting that has some form of connection to a movie, book or whatever. This way when you visit that area/place/location you can actually see something that you recognize or if you rewatch the movie you can say “We were there”…

Now some places you know are going to be a disappointment but you still want to visit them.
Amityville was one of those (so we thought).
Amityville was made “famous” when in 70’s someone shot his whole family and claimed that demonic voices made him do it, now that didn’t really put Amityville on the map but the family that moved into the house after that did… the family literally left the house screaming after only 28 days claiming the house was haunted, even a priest was involved.
After this event a book was released called “the Amityville horror” which also launched a movie and some sequels and even a remake. The house itself still stands, although they changed the look “slightly” from the original house.

Now in the movie the address the Ocean drive 421, in reality it’s actually 112, so we had some information and decided to go and visit the house this time for the simple reason we always postponed it because it would probably be a disappointment, but I kept the feeling I wanted to visit it and at one point you just have to do it.

It already started weird with our satnav “dumping” us in the middle of nowhere in an industrial area, was the house already having it’s influence????????? (que music), luckily we had Google maps to help us out and indeed we ended up in the right street… I expected the house to be hard to find but the opposite was true, the only problem was it was not 112 but they relabeled it 108 (so beware of this), now in all honesty the house actually stands out a lot, if I would be living there I would probably not want to house to draw any attention but this inhabitant thinks differently I guess, it’s one of the few houses with a fence, which actually is very low and totally open and it’s the only house with small red signs warning you to not trespass… now if I would be living there I would have probably posted a small sign claiming “No dummy this is not the Amityville house” but at least we now knew we had the right one.
Now one of the things you have to realize is that there are people living there, so don’t park your car in front and walk close to the house, respect their home and to be honest maybe it’s better to not come to close because it was FREEZING around the house, it was feeling like well below zero…… brrrrrr creepy (In all honestly it was frickingly cold everywhere but that doesn’t sound as scary right?)

I took some images from the house, just because I wanted to keep them for myself and show you guys of course, and we also drove to the other side of the canal and shot some from that area. Overall the house looks like a normal house now and lost it’s intriguing look we know from the movie (that house scared me to death when I was young, and still does).

Now was it a disappointment….?
No not all, the feeling of going on an adventure and looking for a house that was/is haunted and was the “star” in movies and books alone is already worth the time you spend on the road and looking for the location. Taking the pictures was just the icing on the cake. Sometimes the road travelled is a much bigger adventure than the destination…. now who said that again…. anyway we loved it, I hope you guys did too.
BTW during our trip to New York we filmed a lot of material including this trip, and they will appear on a new video Annewiek is creating called “Beyond snaps : New York” we hope to release this somewhere in the summer, it will include loads of cool locations, tips and techniques and is actually aimed at all photographers visiting that area and wanting to see locations that are not in the normal travel guides or for photographers that want to know more about street/travel photography.

And the color versions, looks slightly less scary right ? 😀