Journal 5

Over the course of this project so far, I have found myself stuck on a handful of occasions simply because I am lacking some of the background knowledge necessary to build a photographer's website. I'm not a photographer [trust me, you should see the pictures currently on my point-and-shoot!], so I do not always know what items are most important to photographers.

So, this week, I took a different approach to my "readings" and selected two photography website "guides" that offered some tips when creating a photography website.

Here are the links:
Five Great Photography Homepage Design Tips
Ten Photography Portfolio Website Tips from a Web Designer

These two articles provided some helpful tips pertinent to the creation of Jessica Nicole Photography's website. I especially enjoyed the first article because, much like the Krause book, it provided an example of a "good" design and explained why certain features work on the site. From the first article, the most critical lesson I learned:

"What I mean by this in the context of your homepage is that you should be selecting a few of your absolute best images and featuring them BIG. We are photographers so we want our work to be at the forefront of our potential clients’ minds and this is a great way to do it." 

I had been struggling with this idea. Previously, the images on the front page were moderately sized. Reading this quote, though, emphasized to me that the images on the front of the site need to be prominent. This is, after all, a photography website, and what better way to attract potential clients than to show off her amazing photography?

From the second article, I got a bit more of a general web design tip that I hadn't considered:

"If all you have on your site is a title and photos, there won’t be enough text for Google to place you high in search results.  The best tip for improving your photography site’s SEO is to add Alt and Title tags to EACH PHOTO YOU USE!  These tags are meta tags that you can add to a photo so Google knows what is represented in the photo."

I had never heard of SEO until these two articles, but it makes perfect sense. The whole purpose of Jessica's website is to attract new clients and give her a web presence. This means that her site needs to be searchable on Google or any other search engine. As a result of this, I have gone back and added additional tags on the photos included in the site, and I will continue to do so. The more keywords I put in the title or tags of the photos, the better chance the site has of showing up in a Google search.

All in all, reading these two articles gave me a fresh perspective on creating photography websites, and I feel I come away from these articles with some good, key ideas I can implement on Jessica's website.

Journal 4

At this point, I am in a good rhythm with my project. I have the basic layout ready, and I am familiarizing myself more with the Wordpress system layout and modifying CSS to fit my needs. Right now, I am awaiting information from my client. I asked her to select some of her favorite photographs for the galleries, and once I receive those from her, I will be able to put the images into the site and ensure the slideshows work as intended. After that step, I will have to get her "filler" information for each of the pages.

As I have been working, I have been struggling with design. I do not have a natural eye for design; it takes careful consideration for me to determine what is visually appealing. So, making a website for such a visual business (photography) where design is important has been difficult. I have found myself referring to many different design sources, especailly the Design Basics Index. One aspect of the book that helped me this week was the section on Harmony. "Visual echo is achieved through clear correlations between the colors, styles, content and typographic elements of a design" (Krause, p. 54). That page also gives the example of a postcard with an image of a flower, and the colors in the postcard match the colors in the image. I used this idea in the creation of the website; I have focused my color choices on those in Jessica Nicole Photography's logo:

I asked my client to give me the specifics on color- the exact codes for each color used in her logo. This has helped me to match the colors exactly on the site, and it has made for a more cohesive look to the site.

(Of course, my lack of design intuition is highly hilarious given that I will be creating my school's yearbook this year. This may be a true test of my design abilities!!)

Referenes:

Krause, J. (2004). Design basics index. Cincinnati, Ohio: HOW Design Books.