livebooks blog

Erin Derby discovered photography in high school, and the second she walked out of the darkroom with her first GOOD photo, she was hooked. Derby knew it’s what she would do with her life. In college, she was the photo editor of the daily university paper, and after college she moved to NY where she pursued both art and commercial photography.

Erin Derby feels lucky to be able to shoot various subjects that really interest her, rather than being forced to only pick one genre.

Q&A with Erin Derby

Q1: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

ED: Modern, bright, dynamic.

Q2: How often do you typically update your website?

ED: I do a major update every year, which involves a total overhaul. And then throughout the year I do mini-updates…Approximately every month or so. Depends on what new work I want to share.

Q3: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

ED: I pick something that is new and that I’m personally really excited about, and can’t wait to share. It also needs to be big and bold and striking. It needs to really set the tone for the site. And it needs to be NEW!

Q4: What is your favorite feature of liveBooks?

ED: My TWO favorite things are that the site looks so professional and polished without any effort, and updating it is extremely easy and immediate.

Q5. What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

ED: Don’t overthink it. Don’t spend months debating and delaying it. Just get it up there. You can always make changes.

Erin Derby has been with liveBooks since 2007! See more of her work here: www.erinderby.com

Based in the New York City area, Erik Rank specializes in photographing food & lifestyle images, environmental portraits for magazines, catalogues, and advertising clients. Erik has extensive experience in producing a photo shoot from start to finish with ease. His over 25 years in the photography business allows him to put all his resources together for the main goal of creating a beautiful and dynamic photo for his clients.

“I got interested in photography in high school when my mom made me take a photo class rather than have a study hall where I probably would fool around and get in trouble. At first I didn’t like it, mainly because my mom made me do it but I fell in love with photography and I never looked back.”

Erik has a “Just” series on Instagram that are images that he takes with his phone of images he sees through the course of the day.

“I didn’t really have titles for the photos I was taking so I called it Just xxx… of what ever the subject was/is. For example, an interesting shadow, a bowl of colorful rubber bands at the checkout counter at Whole foods, my martini I am about to drink, my walk during a snow storm and and interesting arrangements of pipes on an orange wall as I get out of my car in a parking lot. It’s ‘Just’ stuff like that, things that I see all day and find visually interesting.”

The Just series can be found on his Instagram account: @ewrphoto.

Q&A with Erik Rank

Q1: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

ER: Light, Airy, Story Telling

Q2: How often do you typically update your website?

ER: Not often enough, but probably twice a year.

Q3: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

ER: They are often edited to death and just select my the quality and the feeling I get from that image or images.

Q4: What is your favorite feature of liveBooks?

ER: One of my favorite new features of the website is how it scrolls up and down. I fell that this is the way people view images these days, on an iPhone or an iPad.

Q5: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

ER: “Less Is More” – I feel I have that problem I feel I have too many images on my website but it is very hard….even trying to take your own advice.

See more of Erik Rank’s work here.