My Website - A Mess or An Interesting Collection?

I like my website as I see it as a collection of my favorite images.

Dean Lautermilch - Street / Model Photographer


I've had some negative comments on it. Please let me know if you like or dislike it.

I could not get past the first page. WAY TO MANY PHOTOS. They also carry me off site which is distracting also.

Organize the photos and only put a few or maybe a slide show on the front. When I see that front page I just left. Busy never works. You need to just have enough on the front page to get their interest and make them want more. Needs to fit on 1 page with little or no scrolling. Front page needs to tell who you are, where you work, are you a business and what you do. two or three photos are the most and all that info needs to make we want to see or know more. Menu system should be clear and concise. To many choices turns people away so layer the menus so you only see some at the time.

Have to agree with Don
That home page is far too busy.

Why do you link your photos to flickr?

Sorry to say I have to agree with Don too. Way too many images and too small. None grab your attention enough to click on them.

Agree with the rest of the comments, plus it looks more like a collection of snapshots than professional work, only post your best.. You also may want to specify Hollywood Florida, Hollywood usually means California.

Don Kuykendall said:

WAY TO MANY PHOTOS.

Click to expand...

Bears repeating.

Consider your website as you would your resume: No one gets hired off their resume. The job of the resume is to get you an interview; it's to spark interest.

....

Thanks for the feedback.
I made two changes
1. Increased the size of the images a bit
2. Added a lightbox plugin

I've just never found another WP theme that I like. Bottom line is I do like and that is all that matters.

For those that get a chance to browse from work... Flickr is often blocked (as it is at my place of employment), so all I can say is:

Lovely BLANK homepage, with the rest being lovely and full of blank spots. If I were in it for the business side of things, I'd take steps to make sure just about anyone could view what you wanted 'em to see.

For the places where I could find pics, I agree with the comments above. They all seemed like small snapshots, and nothing really led me to think "pro". My first impression was that it was a place to share casual pics with family/friends... nothing to make me stop and sign up for a session.

Again, just my .02. If you're happy with it, and you have a steady business flow, that's really all that matters, right?

The homepage is way too busy with way too many photo's on there, not sure your heading "Some of the many images I have done" sounds very professional, depends if you're looking to sell photo's off your site or not but re-wording it would look and sound a lot better.
Again your About page, there's no need for all those photo's on there, that pages should be about you, and there really isn't that much on there that tell people who you are and what your about.

Howdy Lautermilch - It is good that you like it.... but... is that all that really matters? If you are just after something that you alone really like, why bother with a webpage? Just stick all your images in a folder on your pc and look at it. Gotta be easier than uploading a heap if images.

What is the intent of your site? Are you just showcasing your work for your own enjoyment or are you hoping for people to see your work and book you to be their photographer?

If you are hoping to get work from your site the other thing you can do to see how people are viewing your website is to use free google analytics. If you set it up it will give you click through stats, pages viewed, length of time on each page etc.

It is worthwhile imo.

If you set it up and after a month or so get stats that are telling you people are spending less than 30 seconds and not clicking through to your other galleries, then that tells you something is wrong.