Need an opinion

[NovaRoad]

Ok, so here's the website that I've had almost 10 years now that I've used to showcase my Photoshop creations, but mostly just photography for the last 5 years.

http://stillskystudio.com

I want to redesign the site. Before I can do that, I need to figure out the purpose of it first. It's always been a portfolio of sorts, and I'm not opposed to keeping that way. I've also been tossing around the idea of turning it into a photo blog.

I've got pros and cons for both. So I ask the fine members of Pulse this: If you were to have your own website, a little slice of the great wide interwebs to serve as a showcase for your work, what kind of concept would you run with and why?

 

[Bad News Booty]

I say a portfolio AND a photo blog...ur good enough to pull it off

Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using Tapatalk

 

[TroyTheAverage]

I would say keep it as a portfolio. I've always found blogs to be overlooked by many people. Portfolios draw interest. But that is my own personal opinion. I think you could pull off both with the right design.

 

[NovaRoad]

Thanks for the thoughts!

I've been doing a lot of research and web surfing on this topic, trying to figure out the best way to pull off a photo blog, a portfolio/gallery, or some combination of both. And with Wordpress being the engine behind any design I go with, I'm going to design some sort of combo blog/gallery. Wordpress has so many cool features now that make portfolio/gallery sites such a breeze to manage (content-wise anyway).

The big deciding factor though was my photographic workflow: why present the fruits of my hobby in such a way that it doesn't really reflect my hobby? I'll probably only get out once or twice a month to shoot, and each time I have a shoot, I usually come away with 4 - 8 shots that come out gravy. Presenting those shots in a gallery makes more sense to me than just picking 1 or 2 of them to throw up as posts in a photo blog. Make any sense to you guys?

I'll probably use this thread to discuss my ideas and thoughts as I go through the design. I'm hoping to start fleshing out a site map and possible layouts tonight. Since I'm out of work for the moment, I want to devote some time to this while I have the time to devote lol.

 

[Fender]

My suggestion is a portfolio, seperated into categories, and descriptive subtitles explaining what each mean to you and emotions they evoke. You seem like a complex, deep thinking individual so I think you'd probably be able to draw a large audience in the photography enthusiasts world as long as there's some substance and meaning in the photos you are posting.

Just my two cents.

 

[NovaRoad]

Thanks for the thoughts man. That's sort of what I was gunning for with the gallery idea. For instance, take my best captures from each shoot, put them into their own separate galleries, and have a section in the galleries for the technical stuff (what camera, lens, location, etc.) and then say a little ditty about the location, or the theme of the photos, or any emotional connection, so on and so forth.

I hadn't thought about categories though, in conjunction to the galleries. I could have it set up so that if you wanted to bypass looking through each gallery for portraits, for instance, you could sort the images by the portrait category. I like that!