By Peter Clark
I recently had the pleasure of working on a website with Scott Mlyn, former photo editor at Bloomberg Businessweek for over twenty years. Scott was branching out and needed a solid web presence for his freelance services. When we first got started—like with any design project I take on—I wanted to get a sense of what Scott was all about and what he wanted out of a site. Scott briefly filled me in on his experience as a photo editor and what fueled him to step out on his own:
As a magazine picture editor, it was my job to assign photographers of differing specialties—including photojournalism, sports, environmental and studio portraiture, still life and conceptual photography. During that time, I viewed many portfolios including those of photographers I wasn’t familiar with, as well as the portfolios of photographers I regularly hired. What struck me was how often photographer’s portfolios didn’t properly represent their work. This was particularly noticeable with photographers who I worked with for many years and whose work I was very familiar with. I knew their portfolios could have been organized differently to make a much stronger statement about who they are. So I decided I would offer my experience to photographers who might need some help. I felt I had a good sense of putting images together and as a buyer of photography, I knew what would create a portfolio that would have impact. Of course, to start this business, I needed a website to make my statement.
After several email and phone conversations, Scott and I started to formulate what would work best for his website. He even took the additional step of sending over a rough draft of the home page to give me an idea of the aesthetic and copy he was going for. I took his draft and ran with it.
Scott’s rough draft
I suggested Scott go with a WordPress hosted site since they offer great SEO, flexible design layout, and are easy to update. To save some time, we opted he pick out a design template to start as a base for the site and then design off of that. This gave me a solid foundation to work from and made it easy to implement the design elements he’d included in his rough draft. I out together a few layout options before we we settled on the final look, which we then refined to his specs.
Scott’s new website
Once the project was completed, Scott was kind enough to send over an assessment of his new site and his experience working with us:
Since I was in the portfolio business, I felt it was critically important to have a well designed website that struck the right tone. I generally knew what kind of website I wanted and had a good idea of the style I was after. Fortunately, I was able to work with Wonderful Machine, who understood websites, what functions were possible, and how to make it all happen. Most importantly, they understood my design sensibilities and created several options that I could choose from. We had a lot of back and forth collaboration and I am very satisfied with the result.
A well-designed website is the cornerstone of every photographer’s brand.
If you need help designing a website, reach out!