1. Dead simple navigation

Navigation buttons on the bottom of the page that never move, so Photo Editors can grab one and click as fast as they can.

2. Email and phone always visible

You can actually put whatever you want there but zero clicks to grab the email and phone number is awesome.

3. Email a photo option

If the Photo Editor sees the perfect shot and wants to send it to the Creative Director, they can click the email a photo link and it’s done.

4. Deep Linking

Sending links to a specific portfolio or image within a site is easy with our deep links.

Visit my demo portfolio to see it working (here). Here’s a fly fishing story I assigned to James Nachtwey:
http://robhaggart.com/#/Portfolio/Features/8

5. A picture on the bio page

Photo Editors love to see your picture.

6. No Music

Working at a magazine it’s either really quiet or you’re listing to your own music and websites with music can be awfully annoying.

7. No Slide Shows (Except the intro)

When Photo Editors are looking at pictures and get distracted (happens all the time) they don’t miss half your portfolio.

8. Big Thumbs

I’ve always found tiny thumbs useless, so on Design 2 I made the big enough to navigate by.

9. iPhone and html ready

Ever visited a flash website on your phone. It’s like it doesn’t exist. Our websites automatically create html and iPhone mirror sites that load when they need to.

10. The pictures look amazing

There’s something about a design that supports photography. That’s always been true in magazines and now you can see how a website design can actually enhance the photography.

As a photo editor/director as well, I would completely agree with the above. The way the website works can make or break the first impression of a photographer’s work for both photo editors and art directors.

And you know what they say about first impressions…

Great point with number 9.

Editors and Creative Directors are constantly looking at sites on their iPhones. Especially when on set or on location.

[...] several years, however, I’ve been a relatively happy client of SiteWelder. So, when Rob did this blog post about how his Photo Folio site is tweaked to keep photo editors happy, I compared it to what I had [...]