Web Edit: Stephen Devries

BY Wonderful Machine 1 April 2013

Birmingham-based photographer Stephen Devries decided to celebrate with a new Web Edit from Wonderful Machine. Stephen is an incredibly talented photographer with a strong foundation in place. However, he was transitioning his focus from wedding photography to food/drink, fashion, lifestyle photography, and portraiture. He already set up a website using A Photo Folio’s Design X platform. Still in need of assistance, I happily stepped in to offer some guidance with gallery organization and photo sequencing.

Before I looked through the 600+ images Stephen sent over, I called down to Birmingham to discuss his current presentation. I wanted to know what he had in mind as far as an upgrade. Design X offers photographers a clean and simple layout that draws visitors in and keeps them engaged with large, scalable images and intuitive navigation. There were a few issues I noticed right away, though. His portfolio was organized into four sections: Lifestyle/Fashion, Portrait, Food/Travel and Tears. After spending time looking through each, I recommended that he divide up each category, and distinguish a new corporate gallery separate from his portraits. He enthusiastically agreed.

Photographer Stephen Devries new corporate gallery — **_{Samples from the newly curated Corporate Gallery}**

After I dissected his collection of images, I began the process of pairing and developing sequences. I decided to start with portraits. In Stephen’s case, there were two ways to go. He has a nice variety of environmental portraits that show off diverse subjects in different settings. Many of these shots didn’t depart far from his lifestyle work, and would have seemed redundant in a separate category. He also had a great set of grittier black and white portraits that helped show off his range of talent. I used these in his portrait section.

two black and white portraits of an individual in a fedora hat — **_{Stephen DeVries’ black and white portraits}**

Next I took on the task of breaking down and rebuilding the galleries he’d consolidated. When Stephen first launched this site he didn’t think his food/travel/lifestyle/fashion work was comprehensive enough to be housed in independent galleries. All it took was a fresh eye to see that a new approach was all he needed. There was more than enough work in each of these categories to string a cohesive and engaging narrative together. By transferring some of his lifestyle work to his food gallery, I created a sequence that beautifully transitioned from farm to kitchen to table.

food photography showing pancakes (left) and syrup being poured over a piece of chicken and waffles — **_{Where lifestyle meets food!}**

I took the same approach while building Stephen’s other galleries—carefully crafting stories and cohesive edits in each one. Finally, I put together a tears section. Using images that represented all of his work, I built a general outline of Stephen’s offerings. This helped showcase his diverse talents without having to repeat images in an overview gallery, which I strongly advise against.

A tear sheet from the photographer's website showing a thanksgiving dinner — **_{One of Stephen’s tearsheets}**

We ended up with a whopping seven galleries: lifestyle, food, portraits, fashion, corporate, travel, and tears. Stephen was very happy with the direction I’d taken his website. The succinct yet comprehensive presentation helps distinguish his previous wedding photography from his current work in food, fashion, and lifestyle photography. His website now reflects that.