New website

Chris H · October 6, 2010

Hi Folks,

I started my Smugmug site as a gallery a year ago, these days I'm making most money from architectural photography (still part time:dunno) so decided to have a go at creating a search engine friendly site from scratch using CMS Made Simple to help sell my services in a more professional manner. Was a lot easier than I thought....

I know it's not a Smuggers site but thought I'd post it up anyway. I'll still keep the Smugmug site but will now re-vamp it to be more of a gallery (as it was originally intended).

Hope you like:

http://www.chp-architecturalphotography.com/

Chris

chrisjohnson · October 6, 2010

looks beautiful!

Chris H · October 6, 2010

goldenballs wrote: »

looks beautiful!

Cheers.....and check out those search engine friendly urls......take note smugmug!

chrisjohnson · October 6, 2010

Chris H wrote: »

Cheers.....and check out those search engine friendly urls......take note smugmug!

I am curious what you think you did for search engine optimization? You have done what I would do, hammer the main 3/4 points - architectural photography, Scotland, etc. When I search this you appear on the front page - so job done?

On the sites I run it seems we get an extra boost when the content is picked up by others, especially via a link from a popular site, and when the client is on the road or attending events. Even so, more traffic does not necessarily mean more serious business prospects. Again, you seem to have done this although I guess people will wonder how - did you pay for your listing on their landing page?

In your case I might try to mention client names with endorsements. Competitions - even if you did not win. Building names people might look for. Articles in magazines. Yet you do not do this. I wonder why. Good job done in any case!

Chris H · October 6, 2010

goldenballs wrote: »

I am curious what you think you did for search engine optimization? You have done what I would do, hammer the main 3/4 points - architectural photography, Scotland, etc. When I search this you appear on the front page - so job done?

On the sites I run it seems we get an extra boost when the content is picked up by others, especially via a link from a popular site, and when the client is on the road or attending events. Even so, more traffic does not necessarily mean more serious business prospects. Again, you seem to have done this although I guess people will wonder how - did you pay for your listing on their landing page?

In your case I might try to mention client names with endorsements. Competitions - even if you did not win. Building names people might look for. Articles in magazines. Yet you do not do this. I wonder why. Good job done in any case!

Hi, i felt I'd gone about as far as I could with my Smugmug site in terms of SEO, this combined with the fact that I wanted a dedicated (more professional looking) website for architectural photography lead me down the CMS made simple route.

My smugmug site does well now for search engines but it's still not as good as it could be and none of the images make it into image search which is just wasting a valuable resource.

It's going to take a while for my new site to find it's way into the ranking, in the mean time I'll keep my smugmug site going and add some referral links.

Don't get me wrong, my new site won't do what smugmug can do in terms of storing, displaying and printing photographs, but what it will do a whole lot better is be googles best friend in so many more ways.

Hikin' Mike · October 6, 2010

I like it, but I have to scroll horizontally to view your whole site, but it's just wasted space. I'm using a PC with a 1024 x 768 monitor using Firefox.

Chris H · October 6, 2010

Thanks for the feedback Mike. I had a real dilemma on what size to make the site to start with, for future proofing I decided to go on the large size as most monitors being sold now have a larger res than yours. It's not ideal I agree but then again it still looks pretty small on my 1920 x 1080 laptop, and that's a sign of things to come.

Hikin' Mike · October 6, 2010

I'm thinking if you removed this, in red, in your stylesheet:

#footerbottom{
    float: left;
    [COLOR=Red]width: 960px;[/COLOR]
    padding: 10px 0px 0px 225px;
    font-size: 83%;
    color: #FFF;
}

It should remove the extra dead space.

Chris H · October 8, 2010

Hikin' Mike wrote: »
I'm thinking if you removed this, in red, in your stylesheet:
#footerbottom{
    float: left;
    [COLOR=Red]width: 960px;[/COLOR]
    padding: 10px 0px 0px 225px;
    font-size: 83%;
    color: #FFF;
}
It should remove the extra dead space.

Good call, not sure why I had that in there in the first place now!. It's gone. Cheers

Adobe_Andrew · October 8, 2010

Looks fantastic. Keep it up!

wildviper · October 8, 2010

Your site is great. More importantly, love your images. Care to share how you are lighting it and keeping the images so clean?? I also dabble in interior photography of residential homes..

Chris H · October 11, 2010

wildviper wrote: »

Your site is great. More importantly, love your images. Care to share how you are lighting it and keeping the images so clean?? I also dabble in interior photography of residential homes..

Hi, thanks for you comments.

Lighting wise I mainly use what's available, so if natural light is good enough and the interior lights are distracting and not adding much then I just use natural light. Artificial lights add a color balancing combination, so I mainly just have them on if I feel it adds something to the scene.

Most interior shots I do are bracketed with 5 to 7 exposures then combined using exposure fusion in Photomatix.

I very occasional add a strobe or two for extreme high contrast situations, but find that more often than not it's not necessary.

As far as white walls and crisp images go, this is all about understanding histograms. You should be able to look at a scene and know roughy what the histogram should look like before you take the shot (or finish processing it).

Bright rooms with white walls and light furniture will mainly live in the right hand third of the histogram. Learn to trust it!

Cheers

Chris

redleash · October 16, 2010

The new site is very appealing to look at: clean, well-organized, and nice graphic elements. I like it a lot! Best of luck with your efforts!

Lauren

Chris H · October 16, 2010

redleash wrote: »

The new site is very appealing to look at: clean, well-organized, and nice graphic elements. I like it a lot! Best of luck with your efforts!

Lauren

Many thanks Lauren, lets hope it helps to boost business!

Cheers

Chris

New website

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