10 Tips For Designing Photoblogs
December 7th 2007
Photoblogs have the very best looking content, no doubt about it. Why then can it be so hard to design a photoblog well? Surely the photos alone look good enough?
These 10 tips discuss the theme and design for the blog/gallery, and I'll be following it up later with a post on how to organize and display the images well.
My 10 Tips for Styling Your Blog
- Use neutral colors. When photographing people, you never know what they will wear so you use a neutral background. The same applies to your design. You need a background color that works with all your photos (e.g. The black background here is perfect against the Northern Light photos of all colors.)
- Fast loading is crucial. Most first-time viewers will skip from one photo to the next. Their reserve of patience runs lower all the time, and even a few seconds between each image will get on a person's nerves quickly.
- Let your latest photo speak for you. There is no need for fancy imagery in the banner. It will only compete with other images on the page. Use a solid, plain logo and let the photo on the page sell your skills for you (Stuck in Customs is an example of image clashes).
- Do your photos have a style? This doesn't really apply to photography tutorial blogs or general galleries, but for photography portfolios it can be very effective. A photography style can take years to develop but once you have it, its your trademark. Can that style be emphasised by a good design? (Example: Look at the style of Mr Toledano)
- Don't follow all the usual text blog advice. Photos are so different to articles that not all the normal advice applies. For instance, does your blog actually need a sidebar? Text blogs normally do, but when you get down to it, what purpose does it serve for a photoblog?
- Display camera information unobtrusively. It's good to know the camera/lens combination that you used for a shot, but it doesn't all need to be repeated on every page. You can simply name the camera and have link that to a certain section of your "My Cameras" page.
- Provide an RSS feed. This seems to be lacking in most photoblogs. RSS isn't just for articles. I keep up with galleries and even comics in my feed reader. Why not with a certain photographer as well?
- Add post captions. It's true that a photo can speak for itself, but why not get the conversation started? A quick one-liner about the photo and why you took the shot adds a whole new level of interest and gets the comments flowing.
- Splash pages are dead. A lot of galleries have a splash page, but none of them are very useful. Having a large shot of your most recent image on your home page has the same effect of displaying your photography, but the user doesn't have to work out how to enter your site (A lot of them have tiny "Enter" text, e.g. Stefan Loeliger)
- Are monthly archives useful here? I'm normally against having monthly archives, but in a photoblog, perhaps they are actually useful? I find it interesting to see how a photographer has developed and changed from even a year or two ago. Would you agree?
Photoblogs are unique. They don't have as many bells and whistles to fit into a design, and their content is much, much more interesting to look at. The best designs accept this fact and disappear into the background, letting the photography steal the show.
I've used a few examples of good photography blogs here. Do you have any others to share?
I'll start. James Tall is the guy who inspired this post, and his own blog is well worth looking at.
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December 8th at 12:56 am GMT
Comment #1
What a great list, another thing i would as it the width of the pages, I'm running 1024x768 and half of the links to the photo blogs relating to your post went off my page.
December 8th at 3:44 am GMT
Comment #2
Your timing is perfect -- I'm in the process of gearing up for launching a photoblog (just bought some domains today). I'll definitely be following this mini-series.
December 8th at 4:53 am GMT
Comment #3
I like Daisies' photoblog at http://pluckthepetal.com/orangedaisies/
I like the fact that if you click on the photo, quite often you'll get something she wrote about the photograph. Sometimes poetry or how she felt when taking the picture.
If you like photoblogs with photos taken with toy cameras or "junk" cameras, check out the plastic lens at http://www.theplasticlens.com/
December 8th at 10:05 am GMT
Comment #4
I've thought of starting a photoblog myself, but I thought, maybe not now. Because I have 1001 things in my hands already!
But not now, when?
ARGHH!
December 8th at 11:57 am GMT
Comment #5
For those aspiring photobloggers: Have a look at http://folderblog.org/ It's nice and easy, no database needed.
Also: I think that it is Mr.Toledano not Doledano. Sorry about that but I have been following his work for quite a while now...
December 8th at 12:13 pm GMT
Comment #6
Grant - Really? They seem to fit for me when I resize my browser. Still, you make a good point. The photos should definitely fit within the browser (Though the option of a full-size image which is even bigger would still be nice
)
Brian - That sounds great. Epic Edits is a fantastic blog, so I'm expecting high things from the new ones.
Pelf - lol - 24 hours just isn't long enough, is it? xD
Dominik - Thanks for pointing out the typo! I didn't notice.
Folderblog looks like a good script though. The featured one is quite simple, but it's very well done.
December 8th at 12:21 pm GMT
Comment #7
Dave - That's an interesting way of doing things. Do you ever find that the extra click annoys you? (Instead of her having it on the one page?)
And thanks for sharing. The plastic lens looks quite fun tbh. xD
December 8th at 8:11 pm GMT
Comment #8
What a great list. One of my favorite photoblogs comply with all the points on the list, and personally I think this is what every photoblog out there should more or less look like: http://blog.battin.dk/
December 8th at 9:50 pm GMT
Comment #9
That was a cool site, though I think they should make navigation a little easier.
December 9th at 12:53 am GMT
Comment #10
Wow! Those Northern lights photos are awesome. Also has a pleasant navigation.
Mr Toledano does have a distinct style. It stays interesting because he tells a story in each photograph, or set of photographs. Sometimes sticking to a style can make everything look the same. For example, Serial Photographer, they're beautiful photos (and I'm still subscribed), but they feel the same. So, experimenting is good too.
On that RSS feed - not only provide one, but a full size image would be nice too. If not full size, maybe it's possible to use a reduced size but bigger than thumbnail version.
For archives, I think Pixelpost (that I use) shows thumbnails from newest to oldest by default. If you're using paginated archive pages I guess that could serve as an overview of your photography time? I quite like being able to narrow down my archives by category too.
Your point about fast loading has inspired me to do those navigational and loading things I've been meaning to do since I changed theme. Cheers!
I have a whole list of photoblogs that I love in my blogroll. They're the ones that have survived my various RSS cullings.
December 9th at 4:23 am GMT
Comment #11
Michael,
I like the extra content she writes so much I never really thought about it. No, so far I haven't found the extra click annoying. I'd rather have the text on a different blog, than have it interfere with the photograph. Also, if she were to push the text content too far down the page away from the image, some people might not scroll and miss the extra content. In my opinion, having that extra content is what sets her photoblog apart from the others that just post a photograph with a location. That is also why I try to write something about the composition on my photoblog. junkcamerapix isn't going to attract visitors from the "high quality" photographs that would attract people to other photoblogs. She inspired me to write.
December 9th at 10:13 pm GMT
Comment #12
Kristarella - That's a good point. You can grow tired of following the same style for a long time. But if the artist doesn't intend on changing the style much, designing a site to match it isn't going to hurt.
And cool - Every little bit you can do for load speeds is worth doing.
Dave - The write-ups are definitely to her credit then. I was just a little miffed at how clicking the photo took me an almost-different site, and then clicking the photo again took me to Flickr. A little more consistency would be nice I think.
December 10th at 8:23 am GMT
Comment #13
yay, thanks for the info this is very useful, I have to follow this one...Nice post,, Thanks a lot for sharing this informations. Two thumbs up.
December 10th at 7:43 pm GMT
Comment #14
Ack! You forgot about me. I'm sure it was an oversight...
And I've been following Toledano's work for some time ... he's up there with Art Wolfe, James Natchway, and other gods.
I'd disagree with some of the advice here, though, including what shows up in the comments.
* While I'm guilty of running photos no wider than 560px on my own photo blog ( http://blog.forrestcroce.com/ ), I think the larger the better, at least up to a point. 1024x768 px really should be the minimum resolution; this has been common for years, and honestly, is beyond its heyday. How many laptops would you have to evaluate before you can find one that runs such a tiny screen...?
* "Fast loading is crucial." - I think this is one way photography is different from articles. Quality needs plenty of data space to encode. Jpeg does a good job at moderate compression levels, but looks like it was puked on. I think it's fair to expect a person to wait for a 120 KB image to download ... it's also a safe bet that most ( not all ) visitors who come to see breathtaking photography likely have a good display and broadband connection. Just as a site devoted to back country camping can expect its readers to be in good enough shape to follow any advice our routes described there.
* Exif data: I agree this should be unobtrusive, but definitely it should be there and noticeable. Before I began publishing the most important ( camera body, lens, exposure settings ) of this information, I got a lot of emails asking me the aperture and 'film speed' combination used for a particular photo. People, or other photographers at any rate, want to know this. In a world where digital cameras are so popular - more every day - and SLRs are a goal to be obtained ... even people who wouldn't be counted as photographers in the sense that Galen Rowell might be counted see improvement within their grasp.
Anyway, my experience is as a photographer rather than as a blogger, so I hope this is helpful...
December 10th at 11:08 pm GMT
Comment #15
Forrest - I'm sure that not everyone views photoblogs on their laptops and there are still a lot of 1024x768 desktop monitors. Not everyone has their browsers at full screen. So, even though my laptop is more than 1024x768 any page design bigger than that is going to be too big. I'm not going to bother with statistics, but I would be surprised if a majority of photoblog viewers would fit a pic more than 1024 wide in their screen. It would get very annoying to continuously scroll around the page to be able to see an image. It's much nicer to view it as a whole.
I agree that it's fair wait to load a 120kb image. Since Michael had just been talking about backgrounds I thought he was talking about the load time for the other page elements - it would suck having to wait for the header, sidebar, background, scripts to load everytime you flicked to another photo. There are other things you could do to make it appear faster as well. For example if you have a box around your image or a footer, I feel better about a photoblog when the bounding box or footer don't move with a loading image. So, having the bounding box the right size even if the image hasn't loaded yet gives a more instantaneous feel to the page, even if it's not actually quicker.
(For example this beautiful photoblog compared to this excellent one.
December 11th at 7:37 pm GMT
Comment #16
It's amazing how many CN Towers there are ... a person could almost confuse Toronto and Vancouver.
I never run my browser full screen; I'm not sure why, it just feels tacky some how. So while my laptop is running 1680x1050, and my desktop has dual 1600x1200 screens, the web browser itself winds up getting somewhere in the ballpark of 1200x1000, give or take. This brings up a side note: use Opera for this kind of work, as it reports the client area in the title bar.
A development company I worked at a long time ago told one of the developers they would let him go if he refused to accept a high resolution screen. Everyone was issued a laptop at 1024x768, but there was a perception that didn't give enough real estate to make all the toolbars accessible, and that no dev could be productive that way. It's a little draconian, but at the same time if you can't optimize a site both for 640x480 screens and 1920x1200, when your chosen subject matter is inherently visual, it seems more sensible to set the bar a little higher. The last thing I want to do is thumb a person in the eye who has a strong enough interest in photography to get the best PC hardware to enjoy it with.
Of course, you could always use jscript or something on the server to sniff out the browser's size and the host screen resolution, and send down an appropriate version of your site. That seems like overkill, though...
December 11th at 8:35 pm GMT
Comment #17
Mark - Glad you liked it.
Forrest & Kristarella, to join the debate; image sizes is one thing that I want to mention in the 2nd photoblogs post. I would definitely agree with Kristarella that 1024x768 should be the maximum width for a normal page/photo (Larger resis are common on tech-y sites, definitely, but you'd still be turning away a very large percentage of those on 1024x768 or less). However, that's not to say that the image you show on a regular page can't link to a very hi-res version.
(In fact, that's something I'd really recommend for the reasons Forrest gave; about quality etc.)
As for the fast loading; Kristarella got exactly what I meant when she said about other page elements. Waiting for 120kb of a good quality photo to download is no problem whatsoever.
But waiting for a sidebar widget? Or a slow ad code? Or a poor web host? Or even for other photos? (e.g. On your home page Forrest, there's 1MB of photos to be downloaded. That's a lot.)
And Forrest, sorry! I knew I would forget someone.
December 11th at 11:54 pm GMT
Comment #18
Heh, Forrest, you're lucky to have those monitors to work with! That would be cool
Glad I knew what you were talking about Michael - yay for the flow of an article!
December 12th at 2:17 am GMT
Comment #19
A few more thoughts spring to mind ... I don't want to sound contrary, but we all live with a toe in several different worlds. I done enough web work and photography to know these are two groups of people who see the online world in fundamentally different ways. So what might sound argumentative, is really just me trying to explain where us Luddites who used cameras before Flickr are coming from.
We don't really concern ourself with headers and side bars as far as download times go; the browser should cache that. Most of us prefer not to have one, and devote all the space to the photography itself. Others prefer links taking people out to our other galleries. Either way, we're a stubborn bunch.
There's actually no luck involved with having those monitors ... I'm not trying to pick on you, Kristarella, I just think you hit on the difference between photographers trying to be on the web, and web designers who incorporate a bit of photography. I haven't had a TV since I was 18, the times I've had a car, it's never been worth a fraction what my camera is, and I've managed to do without a lot of conveniences people think of as necessary. But my photography gear is first rate, including the digital darkroom I develop the images in. It's not luck; it's priorities.
Now I think it would be a mistake to assume that because I made the choice to have a giant screen, everybody else did, too. But a lot of photographers use that style of calculus.
Michael - What would you recommend to trim the download size for my home page? It seems like it would be a mistake to put all of the images behind the more break...
December 12th at 3:43 am GMT
Comment #20
Forrest, in terms of sidebars etc I was surprised by most of your comments - I didn't realise that your homepage was acting as a gallery and then you have your blog as well.
Eh hem, I was being gracious. I wouldn't count myself as a web designer or a photographer, but I enjoy a bit of both and would like to be better at both. I guess I count it as lucky that you had the opportunity to make photography your priority - my priority is feeding my husband and I healthy food... if one day I can do that via photography then that would be cool.
In the meantime I learn by taking photographs and viewing others' photographs. Seeing what can be done and what I can do better (usually most things). It would be sad if photographers inhibited that kind of learning by making their websites accessible only to people who already have the type of equipment they do. So I hope you're wrong when you say "a lot of photographers use that style of calculus."
December 12th at 1:01 pm GMT
Comment #21
Forrest - I'm not sure what exactly I would recommend for your blog. For one thing, it's about 800px wide, and it has a sidebar. The result is that your photos are a lot smaller than they could be, which is contrary to your high-resolution monitor points.
(And just one that note, I agree that in photography great kit is a real advantage for the photographer, but I don't think that hi-res monitors are bought for the purpose of browsing one site. The purpose is for having multiple windows open at once, and loads of room for Photoshop toolbars etc.)
In terms of your home page, I'd work more on drawing more attention to your photos. That probably means larger sizes (Make your whole blog wider?), and perhaps shorter extract in each post? Have a look at http://www.skelliewag.org/ (Even though it's not a photoblog!). See how the headlines are in a large font, and the amount of text in an extract is quite small? (The size of the photo is usually almost equal the amount of text). It works well for scanning down.
December 13th at 12:03 am GMT
Comment #22
Kristarella - I know you were being gracious. And I was actually trying pretty hard to express a sentiment that I've noticed an awful lot ... not to sound like a jerk. But it's true about photographers using a particular style of making decisions that, well, seems downright anti-social. Many of my colleagues have said things like "if a person doesn't care enough to evaluate the images on a nice screen, they won't pay the asking price for a print." I agree that's a sad way to look at the world, but ... most of the people who hold this kind of view don't care enough about improving their site enough to find a blog like this.
Michael ... yeah, I hate publishing such small images. I really like the wp theme, even though it's thematically unrelated to what people expect from the PNW. I've been thinking about ditching it for a wider template, but ... I really like it. I've tried shrinking the side bar a few times, but haven't been able to make that happen and look good.
December 13th at 12:35 am GMT
Comment #23
I guess if people just cared about selling prints then you're right - they're not likely to read a blog like this, and probably not the kind of photoblog I'd regularly look at.
December 13th at 4:47 am GMT
Comment #24
thanks for the tips, I'll be starting my own photoblog in a couple days
December 16th at 8:51 pm GMT
Comment #25
Good list. I look at a lot of photoblogs and you have definitely hit on some of the things that bother me about photoblog design. I think disappearing into the background is key. I know of a photoblog where the pictures aren't bad, but they can't complete with the bright blue, yellow, red and purple text. Seriously.
December 16th at 10:02 pm GMT
Comment #26
Forrest - I hope that not too many people will think like that though. There's a big difference between an artist and an art lover, if you know what I mean.
Jamaipenese - Cool. Come back and leave a comment here when it's up!
Laanba - Well that's one blog that I won't want to see! Your own one looks great though and fits in with everything I like to see.
December 30th at 1:58 am GMT
Comment #27
Thanks for the tips!
December 31st at 7:57 pm GMT
Comment #28
Welcome Fubiz.
January 14th at 2:28 pm GMT
Comment #29
Very good advices. Thanks for the tips. I will launch my photoblog in few days.
January 14th at 10:07 pm GMT
Comment #30
Cool. Hope the launch goes well.