{"id":7056,"date":"2012-06-14T12:35:19","date_gmt":"2012-06-14T17:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=7056"},"modified":"2012-06-14T12:59:51","modified_gmt":"2012-06-14T17:59:51","slug":"five-perplexing-photographer-website-quirks-alternate-title-in-which-she-alienates-all-her-photographer-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2012\/06\/14\/five-perplexing-photographer-website-quirks-alternate-title-in-which-she-alienates-all-her-photographer-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Five perplexing photographer website quirks (alternate title: In which she alienates all her photographer friends)"},"content":{"rendered":"

O<\/span>ne of the things I’ve been tinkering with lately is the image galleries on my portfolio website, where I host all my Mothership Photography client proof galleries. I don’t like what I have currently but need to find something that is compatible with wordpress, easy to use and would function well both for my portfolio and for client use in viewing proofs and placing orders.<\/p>\n

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I haven’t found that solution yet (and I’ve been dedicating at least four to six minutes each week to the search!) but I have spent a lot of time over the last few months peeking at other photographers’ websites. There are a few widespread practices that continue to perplex me. Here’s five of them:<\/p>\n

1. Charging a fee to keep a proof gallery live for longer than a week, or charging a fee to make it live again.<\/strong> I suppose the logic behind this is to encourage clients to order in a timely manner but it takes about five seconds of effort to re-post a gallery even if I have remembered to take it down in the first place, which often takes months. Maybe this is also an issue for photographers who have hundreds instead of dozens of clients, but I promise I’ll never charge you a fee for this one!<\/p>\n

2. Watermarking low-resolution files that you have purchased. <\/strong> I understand the theory behind this one, too – it’s a marketing tactic. The photographer hopes you post the photos on your Facebook page and all your friends see them and want the photographer to do their portraits, too. But I feel like if you’ve paid for the files, they’re yours to do with as you please. I’m always extremely grateful for the endorsement if you tell people that I took the pictures, but I promise any file you buy from me will be watermark-free.<\/p>\n

3. Referring to themselves in the third person in the “about” section of the website.<\/strong> Danielle Donders will never do this, as she finds it just a wee bit too pretentious for her tastes. Or worse, when what you know is a one-person shop is written entirely in plural – “we” take ourselves a bit too seriously when “we” do this. This always strikes me as erring on the side of puffery instead of making the photographer look more professional. <\/p>\n

4. Charging a fee for extra people in a session.<\/strong> I often see specifications about sessions being for families of four, with a $10 per person (or something similar) surcharge for addtional people. Yes, it’s a bit of extra work wrangling four kids instead of two, but unless you’re bringing the entire extended family including Aunt Bertha and sixteen cousins, I’m not going to charge you extra for it. And if you do have an exceptionally large group, I’d rather negotiate extra compensation on a case-by-case basis rather than putting this arbitrary fee out there.<\/p>\n

I saved my biggest pet peeve for last. Are you ready?<\/p>\n

5. Websites with music on auto-play.<\/strong> Really, any website with music at ALL is enough to make me click instantly away, but if the photographer really MUST set his or her portfolio to music, I’d at least like to be in charge of whether I’m listening to it or not. I know, this is a hotly debated topic among photographers, but really? Can the canned music. Also, have you purchased the rights to use that copyrighted music? Just sayin’.<\/p>\n

These are all totally subjective. I hope I haven’t completely alientated all my photographer friends who have musical-accompanied websites written in the third person with caveats about extra fees up front. I totally get the reasoning behind these practices — but they still drive me bananas, and I promise I’ll never do any of them. (Ha, there is nothing like uttering the phrase “I will never…” to call down the gods. Think I’ll be eating those words one day?)<\/p>\n

What do you think? Do you have a pet peeve? What am I or other photographers doing with their sites that I can learn from or learn not to do? And if anyone has a suggestion for a decent wordpress gallery plug-in, or something I can plug-and-play into my existing wordpress database, I’d love to hear from you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the things I’ve been tinkering with lately is the image galleries on my portfolio website, where I host all my Mothership Photography client proof galleries. I don’t like what I have currently but need to find something that is compatible with wordpress, easy to use and would function well both for my portfolio … Continue reading “Five perplexing photographer website quirks (alternate title: In which she alienates all her photographer friends)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7056"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7064,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7056\/revisions\/7064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}