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Photographer David Wilder dabbled in portrait, wedding, and commercial photography before he landed on his true calling – photographing the great outdoors. Now, David spends his time capturing the beautiful Alberta landscape and exploring around the world. His website is a true reflection of his love for nature – and reflects a clean and crisp look that we are so excited to feature this week.

Check out his full site – www.davidwilder.ca – and read on for what he had to say about his site’s creation!

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

DW: Clean, Simple, Sleek. For someone like myself who is always about presenting my work with less distractions, that’s what drew my attention to this design.

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

DW: I was always taught that your handshake says a lot about you. My homepage is my handshake, it is often the first thing people see and where they start to learn about me. I choose images for the homepage that speak to my character, what I value, and who I am as a person. It is with these images the visitor can become captivated and drive them to want to see more.

Q: How often do you update your website?

DW: The most challenging thing for any creative is to stay current and relevant. Before I found liveBooks, it was so hard to keep updating my site. But with liveBooks the system is now so easy to make changes on the fly. I tend to make updates to my website once a month. I feel it gives a balance between my visitors getting a chance to see what I have recently been working on but not rush their favorite images out the door too soon.

Q: What is your favorite feature that liveBooks offers?

DW: Hands down it is the Admin Portal. Time is so important to everyone. The less time I have to dedicate to making changes means the more time I can focus on my craft. My heart always wants to be behind the camera taking the next photograph and the way the Admin Portal makes updating my site so efficient it allows me to be out there finding my next shot.

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

DW: My advice would be design something that speaks to you, as this will achieve a number of things. A website speaks on your behalf, it represents you. You want visitors to get to know you by viewing it and feel like they have already met you. You also want to be happy with its aesthetics; it needs to be captivating and engaging to your audience, otherwise you will constantly be trying to change it and using up precious time that you could be using to create more of your art.

Follow more of David’s work and adventures on Instagram – @dw_photo_ca

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

Emmy-award winning destination wedding photographers Chris+Lynn travel all over the world taking gorgeous, colorful, and highly expressive images. Their website is so unique and romantic that we absolutely had to feature it this week.

Check out their full site – www.chrispluslynn.com because we absolutely love it – and we’re sure you will too!

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

C+L: Emotive, bold, and handcrafted.

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

C+L: Our clients are couples headed on the literal and emotional journey of having a destination wedding, so our photography is about capturing that – the true adventure of love! We choose images that reflect the authenticity of travel, adventure, and love.

Q: How often do you update your website?

C+L: We try to update galleries with fresh images every two months.

Q: What is your favorite feature that liveBooks offers?

C+L: The ease of updating in the editSuite is great and we love the incredible customer service.

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

C+L: For us, designing a website is a constant work in progress! Understanding this and having a platform where you can continually and easily update and tweak the site is important. Another tip we found valuable was to aim for maximum impact when choosing your images – and design your site to heighten that impact.

Keep up with their destination weddings and adventures on Instagram @chrispluslynn & Twitter @chrispluslynn.

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

Photographer Dorit Thies specializes in beauty, fashion, and lifestyle photography. She creates powerful imagery ranging from international magazine covers to compelling photos captured in exotic destinations all around the world. Her website reflects glamour and elicits intrigue from the moment you land on the homepage – we just had to feature her this week!

Read on to see what she has to say about her site, and check out the full thing at www.doritthies.com.

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

DT: Clean, Intriguing, and quick easy overview at first glance.

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

DT: Each portfolio has its own category. In my case I shoot beauty, fashion, celebrity, and lifestyle. I choose my best and most recent shot to be the first image in the individual portfolio. For example, I have multiple beauty portfolios, based on recent publications, so I place the most recent and most iconic image at the beginning of each portfolio. I play around with the order of the appearance in the editSuite as well to make sure it looks strong on the homepage. I always make sure my latest work shows up on the top rows.

Q: How often do you update your website?

DT: Whenever I get new work in, or I try twice a week.

Q: What is your favorite feature that liveBooks offers?

DT: To have multiple portfolios (21) in my case, visible on my homepage, presenting my body of work immediately and still loading within five seconds.

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

DT: To create a number of portfolios that present your body of work, naming them clearly so they explain the category of your photography, include the name of the story or name of the publication. Make it short and to the point. Promote it as much as you can once you have it published, and make sure you have your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in place.

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

Guest blogger Manuela Marin Salcedo is a research and development team member and content developer at Momenta Workshops. Her expertise is in visual communications and social media. In addition to her work for Momenta, Manuela is working on long-term, independent multimedia projects. Her work has been featured at LookBetween 2014, Fototazo and Light Work. She was also chosen to participate in the 2014 New York Times Portfolio Review.

As creatives we tend to work in a vacuum. So how do we combat this? With community, collaboration, and connections. How do we get that in today’s modern world? By participating in portfolio reviews!

Portfolio review opportunities seem to be everywhere nowadays. You can get your work reviewed at places like The New York Times Annual Portfolio Review, FOTOfusion, Photoville, NPPA’s Northern Short Course, WPPI, PhotoPlus, and even at workshops such as ours, like The Project Series: Working with Nonprofits. Showing your work to others can be daunting. However it will hone your presentation skills, refine your vision, advance your craft, put your work in front of new people, and spark personal growth.

In an effort to help you better prepare for your next portfolio review, the team at Momenta has compiled a list of portfolio review tips to keep in mind.

Chris Usher (far right) gives constructive feedback to student, Stephen Van Seters, during Project New Orleans 2015: Working with Nonprofits workshop, hosted by Momenta Workshops. Photo © Jaime Windon/Momenta Workshops 2015.

Research your reviewer

Before going into the review, you should have conducted some background research on your reviewer’s personal and photographic journey. Having an idea of their experience and body of work will help demonstrate your appreciation for their time and consideration for discussing your work with them. It will also help you ask better questions.

Always have a non-digital backup of some kind

Imagine this scenario: your computer freezes, and you are unable to access the image folder on your desktop. As you try to log into your website instead, you realize the hotel WiFi is not working. Quickly you pull out your iPad, and, as if things couldn’t get any worse, you realize you did not bring the right charger and your battery is at 10%. This example is a pretty terrible and unlucky sequence of events – yet it is also completely probable. Technology has been known to let us down, so don’t tempt the tech gods to strike down on your review. Bring a print backup if possible and be prepared for anything!

Include a variety in your images, but never put in anything you do not love

Think of your portfolio as a symphony and each image as a note. Now think about this: if you play the same note throughout the symphony, you are likely to lose the attention of your audience. The same goes for your body of work. If each image is a note, you should attempt to hit different ones. That said, if your portfolio is a symphony, remember that the notes should work together to create a cohesive whole.

Do not be afraid to put in a personal work section

Personal work, or work that has not been commissioned, is just that: personal. While commissioned work demonstrates your level of responsibility and ability to do client work, your personal projects may better demonstrate your vision and style.

Include title slides to help differentiate between singles and stories

As you are presenting your portfolio, it can be helpful to include simple title slides to signify the end of one project from the beginning of another. This can also aid the flow of your presentation and help avoid confusion. Furthermore, if you have a short amount of time, title slides can cut back on lengthy explanations on your part.

Do not be defensive or overly confident about your vision

At the beginning of the review, the reviewer may ask you to talk a bit about your journey and your work. In doing so, remember to take note of your tone. There is no need to be overly confident or to become defensive when being asked why you chose to shoot in a particular way. Being open to outside opinion and commentary about your work will inevitably help you grow as an image-maker.

Do not talk while the reviewer is talking, and don’t interrupt

As a follow up to the previous tip, remember your good table manners. One of the predominant reasons to sign up for a portfolio review is to get another professional’s take on your work. As such, your role is to listen actively, not to talk over the reviewer.

Take notes

Most reviewers will not mind if you take notes while they comment on your work. In fact, they will probably encourage it. Taking notes will help you remember what the reviewer said about certain images as well as give you a general feel for their take on your body of work. It is also a physical demonstration of your engagement and helps to show how much you value and appreciate the reviewer’s time and opinion. You may even consider recording the session as a voice memo on your smartphone.

Bring business cards or leave-behinds

This tip goes back to the notion of being prepared. By meeting the reviewer to show your work, you have already created an impression and, if you are lucky, established a connection. The next step will be to keep in touch. Having business cards or leave-behinds on hand will aid in this process and help make you memorable. At Momenta, we recommend our students look here for promotional ideas and inspiration.

Send a handwritten “thank you” note

No, this does not mean a “thank you” email. Taking the time to hand write a personal note to your reviewer shows how much you appreciate their effort to help your career grow. If your handwriting is terrible, you can always ask a friend or colleague to write it for you. No matter what, a little piece of mail is the perfect follow-up; it will keep you on the reviewer’s radar and put yourself above the rest with a classy gesture.

Momenta Workshops offers one-day, five-day, and two-week documentary, photo, and multimedia training workshops, including the popular Project Series: Working with Nonprofits held in collaboration with Leica Camera. By teaching storytellers to expand their technical and business skills, Momenta explores how to use the camera as a force of change. To learn more about Momenta Workshops, please visit www.momentaworkshops.com