Eric Harrell wrote:
I have started wondering something....How important to you is your website? Do models think less of you if you don't have one? Are they easily swayed by a " fancy showroom "? Do they think less of you if you choose to pay a site like Model Mayhem, OMP or any of the others to host alot of your photos available for viewing??? Do they really think even less of you if you go the cheap route and have only a Yahoo webpage showing some photos?

What do the photographers think?

What do the models think?

The difference is sort of like shopping in Marshalls or Marshalfields

Hamza wrote:
I have been in business for 20 years, still no website, too busy to actually sit down and get one...

Your images speak for themselves.  Who gives a fuck if a model thinks you are less professional if you don't have your own website.  It's not like you count on models to pay you to pay your bills...

I have seen many AMAZING websites for photographers, all fancy Flash stuff and music going on, but the images the site showcases suck!  If a model really believes that someone who has a website is more professional than someone that doesn't I could care less.

Models don't pay my bills, my clients do.  If you have to worry about what models think about your work and your work is primarily making money off of models, you have more problems than worrying about than a website...

I agree with you whole heartedly.

In many ways a website is just a pain in the ass, if you are busy you have no time to maintain it.  We spend enough time on MM to compensate for it.

GRHorn wrote:
In many ways a website is just a pain in the ass, if you are busy you have no time to maintain it.  We spend enough time on MM to compensate for it.

Exactly! Why would you want a web site???  You wont get that much out of them, they hardly add to one's professionalism, who would go see it anyway, and if you spend enough time on MM that should make sure anyone at all you would want to see your work would.

That's exactly why there are so few web sites....

Ami S wrote:
Personally I like to view photographers web sites.

More so that I can see other things they do that they want to showcase that has nothing to do with photographing just models. Sort of like getting a deeper view into what they see when they are shooting and how they project it.

Like I said that is just me ;-)

Ami:

You are wise beyond your years.

Eric Harrell wrote:
Does the cost of maintaining a professional looking website justify having one???

it's worth it to me. it costs me $10 a year for the name and $4 a month for hosting. I do all my own work, as i've been doing sites for ~8 years now...i was even professional for a time. so expect my photography site coming soon

Andrew Kaiser wrote:
I am a magazine editor by trade, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that if a model/photographer doesn't have a nice looking website then I don't deal with them.  Period.

Having a nice website shows that you have pride in your own work.  I know that isn't always true but think about it like a resume.  In many cases it's the first impression someone is going to have about you as a photographer/model.

My website is outdated, too busy shooting for clients, yet I have old and decent photos on there, but good enough to show that I am in the business of photography.

I have met at a major charity event the owner of a large (1Billion in annual sales) clothing company. Naomi Campbel is on a billboard for them on Time Square right now... HUGE billboard.

I shot him with his family and his competitor (about the same in sales) for a groupphoto etc. and gave him my business card.

Next day in the evening, I receive an email from him that let me bounce off the walls,  because of the content, where he invited me to his offices and wants to introduce me to his marketing department and HE will talk to them about my work.

When I checked my weblog, I saw that during the day, I have received many hits from the URL of that company, my website has been thoroughly looked upon by that company.

So, all those who think it's unnecessary to have a webpresence, have your opinion and "rebell" against websites.

I will not take my down, but will redo and finish it as soon as possible, because that experience showed me that we are being judged just like other businesses.

Does anybody realize that if a business doesn't have a website, nowadays... it's considered unprofessional... and it's reflecting in our segment as well.

Well, each one markets themself differently I gather, some successfully, others not.

I also agree with Andrew's second paragraph, where a website also reflects the pride someone has into his/her own work.

Eric Harrell wrote:
Yes potential clients can go there and view samples of my work but they can also do that on MM or even Yahoo.

I was hesitant, with the implied nudity and barebutts on the avatars and frontpage, to link from my site to Model Mayhem, because of my type of customers.

Then it got better and we had the OT topics removed from the frontpage and I put a link on my website.

Then, MM goes more the direction of glam, barebutts were allowed and I removed the banner from the linksection of my site.

I loved to inform people about my MM portfolio, since I have more recent images up there which didn't find its way into my actual website, but a MM or OMP or similar portfolio is no replacement for a real website, but should be a sampling of what can be seen on the actual website.

This, of course relates only to the actual photographers who are making a living with that medium and not the artist who finds his/her models on the internet only.

Curt Burgess wrote:
Why would you want a web site???  You wont get that much out of them, they hardly add to one's professionalism, who would go see it anyway, and if you spend enough time on MM that should make sure anyone at all you would want to see your work would.

>>>  Your MM site will find you only MM models.
>>>  Your MM site limits the number of images you can display.
>>>  There are plenty of distractions on MM.
>>>  You can't provide FAQs or significant image commentary on MM.
>>>  Without a web site, you appear to be more of an amateur.

In short, I disagree with you.

Eric Harrell wrote:
Does the cost of maintaining a professional looking website justify having one??? Is it less professional to allow MM or some other site to have all your photos for viewing???   I just am kicking a few rocks around.

Oh and by the way I have had my own website for maybe 5 yrs now but I just get the feeling that its only sitting there and not doing anyhting for me. Yes potential clients can go there and view samples of my work but they can also do that on MM or even Yahoo. Guess I am just trying to justify the cost of keeping one up and going. If anyone has a good lead on cheap webhosting and webmaster...I may be interested in talking. I may be paying to much for my site.

What counts as a "professional looking website"?  Many of the sites I see waste time & energy & bandwidth on flashing animation & sound effects.  I would contend that for photographers, you would want a simple & elegant site that displays your photography, lists a bio, provide contact info, hosts a FAQ -- stuff like that.  While it may take a bit of time to set something up, if you keep it simple, it doesn't cost all that much to maintain it.

Yes, it takes some effort, but I'm getting 200-500 visitors a day.  I also accept donations from visitors, and those donations not only pay for the site but also helps me pay for nearly all of my photography expenses. 

So, let me take your post to mean that your site might lack the necessary "critical mass" (e.g. visitors) to justify its effort.  My site, on the other hand, works well for me.

J. Welborn wrote:
I think you need the folowing to be taken as serious

1. A personal site
2. Your FULL name
3. A real location
4. A real phone number that matches the location

If you can't offer your name ,location and phone number you may as well forget it .

I'm not sure I agree.  I guess it depends on the image you want to present.  I prefer to maintain as much anonymity as possible, but I'm happy to provide contact details to appropriate people who contact me through the web site (there's an e-mail form there).

Then again, I'm not trying to be a "professional" -- I'm an advanced amateur, and my web site provides enough income to pay for my photography hobby, including the web site.

Tony Perreault wrote:
As someone who has been doing websites since 1994 (old hand coder of HTML), in my opinion, if you're going to have a website done, pay the $ to get a domain name (GoDaddy is inexpensive). If you can't do the website yourself, then pay someone to do it for you.

This is the "do as I say, not as I do" portion since I haven't gotten my website up yet. :-)

There are a lot of website designers out there. If they don't understand about navigation schemes and optimization of images, run away. The three things that, again IMO (I'm a technical communication major), a good website has to have:

1) Fast loading: not everyone has DSL, cable modem, or wireless;
2) Consistent navigation scheme: If people can't navigate your site, I don't care how
    flashy it is, you won't get repeat visitors - they want to know
    a) where they are,
    b) where they've been,
    c) where can they go,
    d) and how to get back without using the Back button on the browser;
3) Macromedia Flash is not your friend.

Just my 2.6 cents (adjusted for the cost of making a penny)...

Tony

My feeling as a web designer is that for photographers (who are largely representing themselves) a GOOD website is a must. "A" website is simply not good enough and can be damaging if does not compliment your work.

For models who are agency, it's nice to have a site, but a good agency in a decent market will get the model most of their jobs.

Good advice from the quoted poster above; however, I must take issue with the Flash statement. To say Flash is not your friend these days is almost like saying the web is not your friend. There's lots of bad Flash out there, and when Flash gets in the way of content or loads slowly, it's a loser; however, Flash can be done VERY well, and when it loads fast and complements the content, it's working like any other well executed element of the site. Look around and you'll find the best sites out there in most any genre incorporates Flash and multimedia. The trick is to do it well.

LMAO!!!!!!!

thats what your myspace page is for!!!

Curt Burgess wrote:
Why would you want a web site???  You wont get that much out of them,they hardly add to one's professionalism, who would go see it anyway, and if you spend enough time on MM that should make sure anyone at all you would want to see your work would.

Looknsee Photography wrote:
>>>  Your MM site will find you only MM models.
>>>  Your MM site limits the number of images you can display.
>>>  There are plenty of distractions on MM.
>>>  You can't provide FAQs or significant image commentary on MM.
>>>  Without a web site, you appear to be more of an amateur.

In short, I disagree with you.

Uh oh. I'm not sure if my post was recognized for the tongue-in-cheek comment as I had intended or if it was taken seriously.

Josh Humble wrote:
...I must take issue with the Flash statement. To say Flash is not your friend these days is almost like saying the web is not your friend. There's lots of bad Flash out there, and when Flash gets in the way of content or loads slowly, it's a loser; however, Flash can be done VERY well, and when it loads fast and complements the content, it's working like any other well executed element of the site. Look around and you'll find the best sites out there in most any genre incorporates Flash and multimedia. The trick is to do it well.

And therein lies the problem. Not many people *know* how to do Flash well.  I should have expanded upon my comment that "Flash is not your friend" by saying that a lot of people don't do Flash well enough to justify using it.

As a technical communicator, and someone who has done Flash, if someone wanted a purely Flash website I would try to convince them to do an HTML one as well. Some people, like myself, still use dialup to connect to the Internet, and frankly the last thing I want to see is a Flash splash page w/o a link to "Skip Intro" or the like.

Flash is fun. You can do a lot of neat things with Flash. Flash is also, like Photoshop, a time sucking application. I would not advise anyone to use Flash for their site navigation. Some viewers don't have the latest and greatest version of Flash installed, and thus would not be able to navigate your site.

Now, off to work on my website... :-)

Tony

Tony Perreault wrote:

And therein lies the problem. Not many people *know* how to do Flash well.  I should have expanded upon my comment that "Flash is not your friend" by saying that a lot of people don't do Flash well enough to justify using it.

That's certainly a reasonable statement. A nicely done html site is superior to a poorly done Flash site. As with any artistry, if it can't be done well, don't do it and find an alternative.