Up until late April ‘09, I lived on the west side of Los Angeles for seven years.  It’s the world of  ”nip and tuck” and it happens to make a great theme for this morning’s blog.

Living in LA you never say, “I’ve seen it all,” because sure enough an hour later you’ll see something more bizarre.  It’s great to look young, but so often in LA you see women (and men too) who have just pushed the envelope on youth too far.    Personally, I don’t want my gray hair died back to what I looked like in High School!  And I earned those bags I get under my eyes, why would I want to give them up?  The list could go on and on, but here’s my point.

Take a look at your website.   It might be perfect or, like so many other photographers, you either need a facelift or you’ve overdosed on photographic Botox!   

First, photographers often get tired of their images before they really need to be changed.  At the other extreme, many of you can focus your camera, but can’t focus on your specialty.   You’ll have all kinds of images on your website – some of them might be great, others are mediocre, even bad and were just included to fill up space. 

Think about this for just a second.  Pretend you’re a potential client and you’re looking through your galleries.  Let’s assume you’re guilty of inconsistent quality, with a few great images in the beginning, tapering off to average and poor later on.  Look at your images through the eyes of your client.  For me the first question I’d worry about, is who am I going to get if I hire this photographer?  While one image might be spectacular, a minute later I saw images that were “underwhelming”.  The gap between great images and everything else might be huge, leaving me wonder which persona will I get for my shoot.

Second,  there’s the Stuckey’s Grand Buffet Theme of just too many images and too much variety.  I’ve talked a lot about diversity, but you need to make sure your images are separated by subject matter and don’t throw too much at potential clients. 

My good buddy, Scott Bourne, and I have two different thoughts on this.  I don’t have a problem with a photographer demonstrating two different specialties, for example, wedding and children, because they’re both linked in a natural progression theme of family.  Just keep them in different galleries.  Scott believes you’re be better served to position them in two different websites and also target your marketing separately as well.   Pick either suggestion, but don’t mix them up in the same galleries.  You’ll wind up confusing your clients and in the end they might go elsewhere, just because they’re looking for a photographer who’s focused on just their needs.

Third, are your images in sync with today’s styles and trends?  So often I’ve seen images on websites I know were taken years ago.  You need to keep your website fresh!  Personally, I love it when photographers use their images in a blog style with a little copy that describes when and where the images were taken and especially demonstrates their enthusiasm.

Last but not least, limit your copy!  If a picture is worth a thousand words, then don’t bury people in paragraph after paragraph about yourself – give them images demonstrating quality and consistency.  It’s outdated terminology, but your goal is to create “sticky pages”.  Sticky pages means they literally don’t want to leave your site.  They want to share your images with their friends and they especially come back to look at more of your images at other times.

In the end we’re right back to getting a face lift!    Your website is your calling card – it’s who your future client sees before they ever pick up the phone or meet you.   Show images that are created from the heart and you’ll be able to pull at people’s heart strings!

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.  Ansel Adams