New To Smugmug

[dragon_fang]

Hi guys, I'm new to smugmug and joined at their professional level. If anyone here has the time to look over the site and my pictures I would appreciate it alot.

I look forward to reading the comments.

Richard Nelson's Photography- powered by SmugMug

p.s. remember to click the thumbs up if you like the photo... or buy it.

Thanks guys,

Richard Nelson

[April]

Just a thought, hope you don't mind me commenting here, but the descriptions of each photo is a bit unneccessary...I'm new at SmugMug myself, but that's just my opinion.

Examples, "A young man wearing casual clothes and glasses, pushing against anything you put there"
"A young brunette girl smiling and leaning through some bars at the playground"

Sort of leaves no room for imagination...

[dsteelman]

Agreed.....Less is more.

[jfrancho]

A few things.

I am assuming the the long descriptions are for stock site search engines. Try keywords instead of sentences.

Nothing screams amateur like a pro smugmug account. Your home page looks like my smugmug (basically a photo dumping ground for sharing and backups) account, with the exception of a banner.

The watermarks are annoying, ugly, and will not stop anyone from taking your images, if they are worth taking.

Right click disable is an ineffective and annoying security measure as well. I have a few of you images saved and loaded in Photoshop so I can view them in a color managed environment to fully appreciate the color. It took me all of 5 seconds.

Since you have a "Stock" folder, I have to ask. Why are devaluing it by letting the public view it, also putting it risk for theft? Obviously you think well enough of those pictures to consider them "stock" so why treat them as second class citizens?

Some of the pictures seem OK, but the impression I get is, "big hat, no cattle." This may in reality be so far off the mark, so I'm letting you know so you can improve things.

I would pick 15-30 images for public display, and leave it at that. The rest of the site should be hidden.

[evoryware]

It looks like any gallery from 2001. There's so much more you could do with it to make it simpler. I agree with the above posters.

And Jfrancho is right; this becomes a nice free wallpaper the way you have it set up now.
Richard Nelson's Photography- powered by SmugMug

You may want to checkout Smugmugs own forums to figure out how to customize things, hide things like keywords and images, only allow smaller images to be viewed, and customize it to make it look more professional overall. Smugmug can be made to look professional but it will take time. Right now it looks like a basic account. If you really want to make money off your images you will definitely need to make some changes.
Digital Grin Photography Forum - Powered by vBulletin

[jfrancho]

Good point. DGRIN is great. And you get the pleasure of grilling Andy when Smugmug is down, LOL.

[aam1234]

Hope Richard doesn't mind asking a side question in his thread. If you do please let me know and I'll remove it.

If you load a full size image to SM (say 5 MBs), will the viewer be loading the whole 5 MBs or a small/re-sized version of it.

Thanks

Btw, only checked Canada Day and those fireworks are beautiful.

[Rodeoshooter]

Deleted duplicate post.

[Rodeoshooter]

Richard,

Welcome to the Camel. Hope you like the forum.

How long have you been a Professional Photographer?

Originally Posted by dragon_fang

Hi guys, I'm new to smugmug and joined at their professional level. If anyone here has the time to look over the site and my pictures I would appreciate it alot.

I look forward to reading the comments.

Richard Nelson's Photography- powered by SmugMug

p.s. remember to click the thumbs up if you like the photo... or buy it.

Thanks guys,

Richard Nelson

[dragon_fang]

Hi guys. I really appreciate the feedback, I haven't had time lately to check out photocamel recently so I was glad to see some responses. I have been a "professional" for about a year now. "Professional" meaning I sell my pictures. However I am not a real professional as I don't make most of my income from photography... yet. I thought having a professional smugmug account would help me sell more pictures, but maybe I was wrong. Thank you for the critism and I am always trying to improve everything I do from technique, quality, ideas, marketing, etc. I will definately change some things on my smugmug account though. I originally thought that having large pictures for people to view would make them more likely to buy them. Thank you everyone.

[dragon_fang]

Originally Posted by aam1234

Hope Richard doesn't mind asking a side question in his thread. If you do please let me know and I'll remove it.

If you load a full size image to SM (say 5 MBs), will the viewer be loading the whole 5 MBs or a small/re-sized version of it.

Thanks

Btw, only checked Canada Day and those fireworks are beautiful.

I don't mind at all. An the viewer definately loads a smaller pic and not the full 5MB or whatever of the original. The load time between a small photo and a large one is quite a difference.

I hope this answered your question.

[aam1234]

Yes it does. Thanks Richard.

[jimmyd]

There's lots you can do with SmugMug. For instance, you can use your own URL and have it redirected to SmugMug and it will look like regular site... not a SmugMug portfolio.

Here's a link to a site my g/f created. She's pretty good with computers but isn't a website designer. She and my daughter have a biz shooting family, event, and commercial stuff. I shoot some of it too. If you let it load for a few seconds there's a slideshow on the first page. You can also navigate to the galleries and ports. You can make some of them private, giving PWs to clients, or they can be public. We love the print ordering capabilities of SmugMug. Their printers do a great job-- haven't had a single complaint yet. (Knock on wood.)

www.bvfoto.com- powered by SmugMug