When beginning this module, I already had a website that I was using for commercial practices. This included directing potential clients to my website, and serving as an online portfolio so that they could see my work and it might lead to gaining work. Already having a website that suited my needs, my aim for the module was not only to improve my website.



The aim when making my website was to have a clean and professional website that would illustrate bothy my professional and personal practice. After looking around at several different hosting sites I chose Cargo. I did this as I felt that Cargobest suited my needs as it had a large selection of website templates, custom HTML editor, customer support, and is a host to creative professionals.



Before I began to build my website, I looked at several websites from photographers that I looked up to or photographer’s websites that I found visually appealing or worked in a similar in the industry I wated to go into.







In addition to this, I looked at Joe Hickson who describes himself as a creative generalist who uses a graphic designers’ approach to branding a website. He was asked to create a brand style guide for merchandise websitecalled Fresh Merch. When designing, Hickson said “I chose a clean, nothing too poppy from the websites branding to allow the creators to show through … when coming up with a colour scheme for the website, I thought to keep it black and white if you’re wanting the creators to show through” (Hickson, 2020). Consequently, I applied this to my site build; there is no asset or text that is not black, white, or grey to allow my photography and videography to stand out and make it the main focus of the site.



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I continued to update my website over the year before the module began. My website was in a place that I was happy with, however, I took the time to make improvements and spent time in optimising the site, making sure to develop my professional practice alongside.  One of the ways I did this was by getting in touch with a website designer from Splitpixel inviting him to comment and make suggestions on my website. I had already been in contact with this developer when initially constructing the site, however, we spent more time together to optimise the design. We both agreed that it was already at a point where it suited its purpose, looked professional, and aligned with my creative outlook. Some changes were applied but these were minimal. Before implementing the changes, I completed a blog post where I asked several people their opinions. In their responses they agreed that both versions of the site (the before and after) worked well and were easy to navigate. However, the new design of the site was simpler and therefore allowed my photography to stand out.









My website homepage is a selection of my strongest work where the images transition from one to the next, thus creating a continuous loop. I did this as I wanted to showcase the work that I was proud of but also the nature of the work I wanted to attract. On the left-hand side of my home page, I have three clickable links: “Portfolio”, “Personal work” and “About/ contact”. I chose to keep it to these three to keep it clean. At one point I had also moved the menu button to the left-hand side of the screen, in order to have all of the elements on the left side, however, after speaking to the designer at Spitpixel, it was agreed that having the menu icon at the top right was standard for most websites and therefore most viewers would look there from a drop-down menu.





Portfolio:

This page of my site is the main focus as it serves as my online portfolio. It is organised into six different sections reflecting six distinct areas of work. I chose to display my images in a grid configuration after looking at other commercial photographers, namely Samuel Brown, Sophie Traynor and greybox who had displayed their portfolios in a similar way. I also thought that it was a good way to display a larger selection of work.







Personal work:

Alongside my portfolio I also wanted to showcase my personal work, and I chose to display it in a similar way to my portfolio to make the site aesthetically cohesive. As this page was not the main focus of my site, I chose a few selective pieces of work to display.











About/ Contact:

The About/ Contact page is where most of my text exists on the website. A deliberate choice was made not to have text incorporated in the other sections but to include it here to allow for complete focus on my creative work; I chose to keep this page quite simplistic so the information would stand out. As a part of my personal information, I included qualifications, awards, and exhibitions to show to viewers and clients that I have been engaging in the world of photography for several years.









When working on the blogs for the website, I noticed that most of the commercial photographers did not have any blog activity. In addition, when speaking to other commercial photographers, they said that they did not engage in blog posts. With this information I chose to keep the blogs accessible through a URL and used them to document the website building, and highlight the jobs and professional practice I have undertaken throughout the year.