4.08.2013

Remember how cool it felt the first time you made a website?

http://kirktuck.500px.com/food_and_restaurant/

http://kirktuck.500px.com/food_and_restaurant/

We made our first website in 1998 and, of course, everything had to be hand coded. Bandwidth sucked back then so we had to make sure that every image was a tiny little jpeg that would open quickly. Once you had everything the way you wanted it on your machine you lived through various levels of agony every time you saw your site on someone else's hardware. If they weren't using the same browser that you optimized for the elements of your crafty site ended up all over the place and the type got replaced by some goo type that made your design look like crap.

Now you can just hop on the web with a bucket of images and make a quick web portfolio to share in minutes. When I finish shooting something fun I hop over to 500px and add to a gallery or build a new one. I can send the links out to potential clients pretty darn quickly.

With blogs and portfolio sites everywhere I think the traditional sturm und drang of creating a masterful website has been tamped down. Most clients just want to see the images or get the contact info. If you've done your thousand little marketing jobs right they've already seen your images in more than one place.

I'm looking into Animoto right now. Seems like a fun way to make tasty little motion bites. Do you have experience with Animoto? Would love to hear how you use it and how you market with it in the comments.

Thanks, Kirk

8 comments:

Michael Gowin said...

If you're checking out Animoto, you might look into Proshow as well. Similar features and a bit less expensive.

http://www.photodex.com/

Ken said...

I second Michael's recommendation, though he may have meant to say ProSow Web which is similar to Animoto and, being Web-based, is computer agnostic. ProShow is a program that is Windows only, amazing but Windows only.

Cal Colborne said...

I use Animoto for Wedding DVDs and find it great for that but I find it a bit lacking in resolution when used online. I use the web based version of Slide Show Pro for my web pages, my images just look better and it also allows multiple galleries, if that's of interest to you.

Cal

Michael Matthews said...

Hi, Kirk...

Your 500px galleries look great until I click on "healthcare" in the menu bar. That just goes to a blank page with the letters "ok" in tiny type upper left. Maybe it's just out for maintenance or updating; maybe it needs attention.

Michael Matthews said...

Oops. That was "medical", not "healthcare". So much for accuracy. But it's no longer a factor. Either you fixed it or the problem righted itself.

Anonymous said...

How is it that you are as gifted with food as you are with people?

JereK said...

Thanks for making me hungry! Seriously, great photos of food and indeed, it has never been as easy as now to have a good looking web presence, problem is more how to push through the clutter and be relevant I think.

Andrea Costa said...

I made my first web site with notepad. It also had an embedded midi song... Very hi-tech.