Photography on the Web Aug 13 2004
Having just opened photographer Washio Kazuhiko's new site, I decided to look back at last year's site for Ninagawa Mika and see how the two compare with other photographer's sites.
Compared to a site heavy on information, such as a news or portal site, photography sites are relatively straightforward. In theory, a plain white background and some neutral text should set the photographs off perfectly, and once a template is built, a bit of batch-resizing of scanned prints should be the end of it. However having done these two sites I quickly realised there's considerably more to it.
A Whiter Shade of Pale
Although Mika's super-saturated images demanded a white background, most photography on the web sits far better on a darker colour. A look at any printed photography collection tells you otherwise, but the difference between print and screen is *glaringly* obvious and a white background dominates the eye. To his initial surprise, I proposed a sand-coloured base for Washio's site, after reading an article about David Hockney's decision to repaint the white walls beige at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition.
This sand colour not only brought the photography to life, it also built on the themes of Washio's work such as nature and man's encroachment into it. American photographer Todd Hido's site usues a similar approach, placing his images of empty rooms and homes at night next to shades of terracotta and salmon pink an interior designer would be proud of.
Groupies
As I did with Mika's site, Netherlands born photogrpaher Anton Corbijn presents his images as thumbnailed collections before showing larger individual versions of them. When I came to make Washio's site, I realised that for photographers such as Ninagawa and Corbijn who present a unique visual "world", grouping images together helps to solidify it. Using the same approach for Washio's work however, actually weakened each image, leading to the "1 page 1 photo" decision.
Blogability
Immersive Flash sites such as Luca Gilli's certainly allow a photographer to take their "world" and push it as far as their imagination lets them, but for most people, self-maintenance and budget requirements call for an html-based site. In turn, a site with multiple collections of photographs is going to require a lot of repetitive coding to get all the pages linked. Cue MovableType and a few custom templates though, and the photographer is soon able to not only upload new work themselves, they don't even have to link the pages, as MovableType will do that for them.
Although it provides the funtion to FTP files and use entry fields to include filenames, MovableType isn't quite as developed in this area as I'd like. Still, photoblogs such as intransient photo journal use the medium to stunning effect. Before long, blog software will provide easier means of creating photoblogs, and that combined with the rise of digital cameras should see an explosion of great new photography sites.