Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Landscape & Nature Photography => Topic started by: dgberg on January 23, 2010, 08:57:54 am

Title: Looking for Landscape and Nature gallery display options.
Post by: dgberg on January 23, 2010, 08:57:54 am: Its been about a year since my web designer started my website,www.bergscanvasgallery.com The site was designed by Pipedream Studios with my input. After about 20 changes I am about ready to tear and rip apart certain sections again. The Gallery and a new pricing page .
At the beginning the plan was to have most of the empasis on my Landscape and Nature Gallery Photography. Although I have a nice 650 sq. ft. gallery I have changed gears and have moved more in the direction of Fine Art Printing For Photographers. I signed on with Morephotos.com at about $500 a year and have not been happy at all. The plan was to upload photos easily and display them on my site for client shoots as well as my own work. The problem is the formats are just terrible especially if you are trying to show your own work with a little verbage about each shot. The layout just screams "I have something to sell" or "buy me". I am going to dump Morephotos but this time I am going to do my homework a little better. The new "Flickr" link in Lightroom 3 beta is going to be the wave of the future with the direct upload from Lightroom. Although the ease of exporting photos from Lightroom to Flickr is what I am looking for,Flickr itself is not the way I want to showcase my photography.
So what are many of you folks using. Looking for something with a first class presentation. Nice framed images,slideshow and most important I want to be able to upload photos and copy with ease.
Thanks for your suggestions and comments.
Title: Looking for Landscape and Nature gallery display options.
Post by: DarkPenguin on January 23, 2010, 11:55:35 am: Zenfoliio?
Title: Looking for Landscape and Nature gallery display options.
Post by: wirehunt on February 07, 2010, 07:49:49 pm: The eternal question and the one asked the most by photographers I would guess.....
Title: Looking for Landscape and Nature gallery display options.
Post by: ghaynes754 on February 07, 2010, 08:31:28 pm: Dan

From the November issue of PhotoPro a good sampling list

SimplePhoto/Pagescene
PhotoShelter
LiveBooks
Clickbooq
SmugMug
FolioLink
Title: Looking for Landscape and Nature gallery display options.
Post by: Samotano on February 10, 2010, 11:54:50 am: The best solution is to pay a good web developer to set this up coupled perhaps with a custom content management. This is going to be expensive. In terms of canned solutions, many professionals use and love smugmug. I had looked at zenfolio and liked the layout better. As for the free/semi-free services like flickr I don't think they are quite appropriate for you need although there exist scripts that allows one to see a flickr page with a different layout for example with a black background. Btw, there is a lightroom plugin for flickr. It works great.
Title: Looking for Landscape and Nature gallery display options.
Post by: fredjeang on February 10, 2010, 12:19:04 pm: Hi,

If you look for professional features,
I would recommend
-PhotoShelter (it has a powerfull searching-classification engine, to me the most Pro-featured )
-Clickbooks
-Big Folio
-NeonSky (also very serious)

Then, if you have notions of Html/CSS,
there are 2 good CMS
-Indexhibit (generaly very appreciated by arquitects and designers)
-Pixelpost (very stable and configurable).

Fred.
Title: Looking for Landscape and Nature gallery display options.
Post by: dgberg on February 11, 2010, 03:55:55 pm: Thanks for all the suggestions. Plenty to keep me busy.
Title: Looking for Landscape and Nature gallery display options.
Post by: Josh-H on February 11, 2010, 05:15:47 pm: I can recommend Live-books. I have been with them for years now and very happy with them.

They even offer a free thirty day trial now - so u really have nothing to loose except a bit of time to try them out.

My own site is a live-books site - but its about to change because I have sold my portraiture business.
Title: Looking for Landscape and Nature gallery display options.
Post by: dgberg on February 12, 2010, 06:00:55 am: Just to clarify I am keeping the present website but want an updated section for my Landscape and Nature Gallery section.
The 2 things I will be needing are a new web host and the upgraded gallery section. No more online sales or picture upload for clients. The web is great for pushing workshops and gallery prints but for the rest of our services we want customers to come to our facility in person.
So its a 90% brick and morter business rather then an internet sales site that we are trying to build. We have no interest in trying to compete with the internet mass produced print sites. We want the enthusiest and professionals in our area to stop in and see our new facility including the services we have to offer including our photography studio,studio rental,workshops,landscape and nature canvas gallery and printmaking studio. Presently we get about 1 or 2 customers a month that stop in. We need 1 or 2 a day. (We live in the country so its 30 mintues to an hour for customers to drive here) I've got alot of marketing work to do and am happy to listen to any suggestions for the business or website.
Title: Looking for Landscape and Nature gallery display options.
Post by: Thomas Krüger on February 12, 2010, 09:42:59 am: Have a look at SlideshowPro together with SlideShowPro Director, you will get a lot of possibilities to build a gallery - http://slideshowpro.net/ (http://slideshowpro.net/)
Title: Looking for Landscape and Nature gallery display options.
Post by: ghaynes754 on February 14, 2010, 03:24:23 pm: Take a look at BluDomain.com. I saw a website by Don Libby, ironcreekphotography.com, and was impressed with the presentation.