livebooks blog

Richmond, VA based award-winning photographer Rebecca D’Angelo has some incredible achievements – just one of which includes having her images of Hurricane Katrina: 10 Months After the Storm in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress. Equally impressive is her website design and chic, clean style she utilizes. We couldn’t wait to have her be our featured website this week, and we think you’ll love her site, too!

Read on and then head over to www.rebeccadangelo.com!

Q: How would you describe the aesthetic of your site in three words?

RD: Clean, Intimate, Contemporary

Q: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

RD: I have an editor, Suzanne Sease, that I usually work with every year or two and she generally picks the images and puts them in order for me. Whichever is first for each portfolio is the one that pops up on the homepage. Sometimes, if I take a new favorite and I find the time, I will switch it up myself.

Q: How often do you update your website?

RD: Not very often, unfortunately! All this technology has made life more complicated and seems to zap us of all our time. I have a sense of inertia that tends to set in. When I switched to the Scaler site, I sat on it for over a year because I knew it would be a gargantuan task to track down all my original photos and resize them. It was good, however, because I had not updated it in a while, except for a portfolio on the site titled “New Work.” I spent last summer compiling images and getting a lot more of my current work to show Suzanne, as well as some of my projects.

Q: What is your favorite feature that liveBooks offers?

RD: I joined liveBooks pretty much in the beginning. Suzanne had recommended it to me, and felt it was the best. I couldn’t agree more when I saw the sites. I was looking for something uber photographer friendly and clean that wasn’t going to eat up all my time trying to figure out. Having worked in photojournalism most of my career, and with photo-editors, I felt that the simpler and the cleaner, the better. It should be about the photographs. I do not like blogs, I don’t want to scroll down, I don’t want to be overwhelmed with too much text or imagery. Before liveBooks, I would pay someone to update my site every time I needed it done. I loved the look of liveBooks, and I love that it is easy to navigate and doesn’t try to be all fancy schmancy. The new Scaler sites are great; I love that my website has one look on my desktop and another look on my phone (one is black background, the phone is white). My favorite features are that I can link and generate spider capabilities on the Internet and I love that I can upload and change images at will, without any hassle. Also, I have two websites: www.rebeccadangelo.com which features my published editorial work and projects, and www.rebeccadangelophotography.com features my animal photography and pedestrian work. I can link the two sites in multiple ways without interfering with the look of either one. I had looked at other sites to use for my work but never found them as clean and as much of an industry standard as liveBooks. It feels much more like the book I used to drop off at magazines back in the day. I can always tell a liveBooks site, and I know that the person using it is typically a photographer of merit.

Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

RD: My advice would simply be not to try to be too trendy. Keep it clean and simple. Editors look at hundreds of sites a week and if they have to work too hard to use your site, or if the first image doesn’t catch them, they are moving on.

Have a website you’d like us to feature? Email us at social@livebooks.com.

We love the way photographer Mike Henry’s website homepage opens right up to display tons of his beautiful images. The navigation is smooth, and the photos flow perfectly – which is why we chose it as our featured website this week.

Don’t forget to check out www.mikehenryphoto.com after seeing what he had to say about his site below!

Q: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

MH: Easy Navigation and Viewing

Q: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

MH: My homepage opens up in my Lifestyle Portfolio thumbnail overview. I want to  make it as easy as possible for the viewer to quickly get a feel for my work as a whole. I know that people are busy and have short attention spans and my hope is that they see what they are looking for, without having to spend much time searching.

Q: How often do you update your website?

MH: It is in a constant state of change. I update it weekly/monthly or whenever there is new work and I am constantly editing out old images that I don’t feel are relevant to my brand.

Q: What is your favorite feature that liveBooks offers?

MH: Probably how easy it is to add images myself or its superior SEO.

Q: What’s one piece of advice yo’d offer to someone designing their website?

MH: I would say it’s important to make the images load fast and emphasize the importance of easy navigation.

Have a website you’d like us to feature? Email us at social@livebooks.com!

With full screen, eye-catching images, an awesome navigation, and one of the coolest logos we’ve ever seen, photographer Ted Tamburo knocks his website design out of the park.

Read on to see why we chose him as our featured website of the week and head on over to www.tamburo-photography.com.

Q: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

TT: Minimal, Clean, Fun

Q: How do you choose the imagery for your homepage?

TT: I intentionally do not display an image on the homepage. I want an entry point that is neutral and very minimal. This allows the user to then choose where they go and what they see without being influenced by a random homepage image that may not relate to their needs. Plus I simply love negative space and simplicity.

Q: How often do you update your website?

TT: I don’t have a specific schedule. I tend to add new images as I shoot them and I occasionally decide to re-work the order of them as well. It’s easier said than done but changing things frequently is generally best as it creates a new experience for the end user and also keeps you creatively sharp.

Q: What is your favorite feature that liveBooks offers?

TT: The behind-the-scenes back end of liveBooks is what initially attracted me. The FTP, the ease of adding and changing images, it’s the stuff the user does not see that I actually like best.

Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

TT: Edit. It’s a tough decision choosing what you show and I often see people with just massive amounts of images on a site. I think they feel that more somehow shows they have experience or something. I find that very few people have the attention span to really look at more than a couple dozen images at a time, then it all just becomes the same. I also sometimes see people repeat images. For example, I have a drink portfolio and a product portfolio (among others). In many cases a drink shot (say a bottle) is also in essence a product shot. I am tempted to repeat the images in both portfolios. That would be fine if someone only looked at one or the other, but what if they look at both? To me it looks odd to have repeated images, as if you are trying too hard to fill up space. You have to choose – and making those editing choices is the hardest part.

Have a website you’d like us to feature? Email us at social@livebooks.com.

There’s really only one way to describe photographer Ben Clarke’s website: cool. Everything about it screams modern and highly impactful and we are so excited to feature it this week.

Check out what he had to say about his site’s creation and head on over to www.benclarkev.com to see the full thing!

Q: How would you describe the aesthetic of your site in three words?

BC: Tailored, Modern, Visual.

Q: How do you choose the images for your homepage?

BC: I go with images that have a cinematic touch, also photos from a shoot that brought happiness or joy in the moment.

Q: How often do you update your website?

BC: I will change out images or add something when I believe I captured the vision I had or was just totally surprised by an outcome.

Q: What is your favorite feature that liveBooks offers?

BC: liveBooks’ new feature, which displays a mockup of the site across all different devices now that are browsing the web is nice and convenient. This is on the new platform’s back-end.

Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

BC: I would draw inspiration from a website that is impressive ans is accomplishing things that you are going toward. Don’t be afraid to make tweaks once liveBooks has made custom changes. Keep in mind your original idea when working with liveBooks creatives. Be willing to adapt to what is current and available within the design elements. Give the site character and have original content for viewers.

Have a website you’d like us to feature? Email us at social@livebooks.com.