Friday Shout-Outs, Killer Photo Portfolio Websites Edition

This week’s Shout-Outs are all about sweet looking, tricked-out, smokin’-hot, smart-as-hell, PhotoShelter portfolio websites. I decided to list 10 websites that look great and also make full use of the “I can’t believe it’s not Flash” portfolio display options now available in all PhotoShelter themes.

Shout-Outs are a regular Friday thing, and you can be part of it, too. Send us suggestions! If we think it’s worth shouting about, it will show up here in the blog on a Friday. To submit something, scroll to the bottom to see how.

ONE SMART PHOTOG
Huge shouts to Switzerland-based photographer Johan Peijnenburg who just finished one hell of an awesome website redesign! He did it with one very smart goal in mind — to make sure the images were the star of the show.

Johan has skills as a designer of business software and web applications, which came in handy for the site redesign project.

His previous website design was dark, and he wasn’t happy with how nature and landscape images looked on a black background. He also wanted to find better, more balanced and seamless way to integrate his blog and his portfolio – and I think he totally nailed it.

“I did the redesign with the following key aesthetic starting points,” he said. “I want a white background… period; I want a maximum of negative space around everything; I want it to be as simple and minimalistic as possible; I will not put anything on that distracts from the images; and I want a consistent look and feel across my WordPress and PhotoShelter pages (especially for buttons, links, etc).”

He said he also spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to point visitors in specific directions on each and every page. He tried to limit the use of “visible” WordPress plugins to what was only necessary (sharing and liking basically).

“I am using my PhotoShelter RSS gallery widget to point visitors to new images from my home page (click recent work) as well as on the PS home page,” he said.

“I also use it in posts directly (instead of the sidebar) to showcase an image and associated PS gallery. Also included a featured gallery page in the WordPress part. These three things are very keyword rich and should help SEO.”

The site is based on Graph Paper Press’s Modularity theme and he used the PhotoShelter integration tools to sync the look and feel.

“Key feedback I have gotten till now, from both clients and colleagues, was that it was very easy to find the way around the site, that it was a lot more pleasing to the eye, clean and simple and most important to me that it is indeed nicer to view images on white as colors do not get over-saturated.”

Johan also created two really useful widgets that help to integrate content from PhotoShelter websites into WordPress blogs, the NiO PhotoShelter RSS Gallery Widget and the NiO Dual Search Widget.

FROM THE AMERICAN WEST

Adam Schallau is a photographer based in the high desert of New Mexico. He is best known for his dramatic photography of the American West. His website is pretty cool too. He’s using one of the Graph Paper Press themes, and has integrated it with PhotoShelter in a way that look like no other. The WordPress-powered site is linked to his PhotoShelter archive, where 9 different portfolio galleries live.

He did a great job with this website.

THIS IS ONE HOT WEBSITE

Check out the amazing portfolio from Sigtor Kildal, a photographer based in Wellington, New Zealand.

“Today Sigtor is working as Motion Capture TD for Weta Digital on feature films like Avatar and many others,” his bio reads. “But it still leaves him with a creative hunger for which photography is the perfect outlet, social, spontaneous and with fast turnarounds.”

His website, portfolio, and his blog all blend perfectly together in a design that is unique to him. Nice, clean, simple, and dramatic. I like this website.

GO, TOMMY, GO!

Tommy Abad is a fashion, lifestyle and portrait photographer based in Argentina.

“I’m a dreamer who can enjoy life being able to do what I love the most, taking photographs,” he said. For the last 12 years his fashion images have been published in several countries all over the world. He has shot images for fashion campaigns for prestigious designers like Loris Diran Couture (NYC), and even worked for Francis Ford Coppola in his independent film named TETRO, and for James Ivory’s film “The city of your final destination” with Anthony Hopkins and Laura Liney.

He’s using the photo wall feature that links people to specialty galleries, and is using the portfolio feature to showcase images in his current book. His website also promotes his available stock archive.

Also worth a read – his blog post titled “Everybody & Lack of Ethics”, where he talks about the actual costs a photographer must deal with when doing fashion shoots – and what it really means when someone asks him to shoot on the cheap. Love it!

IT’S ALL ABOUT NEW YORK CITY

Guillaume Gaudet is a French freelance photographer based in New York City, specializing in travel, landscape, urban and street photography.

“As someone who has always been fascinated by photography, the urban landscape and the melting pot atmosphere of the Big Apple is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for him,” his bio reads. “New York is his favored playground, where he does not tire of photographing the smallest detail. Through light, architecture or a life scene, in each of his photos he tries to capture a small part of the city’s soul and energy.”

Guillaume’s website portfolio showcases 29 of his images of New York City – showing off his unique style and photographic approach. If you click the “Publications” link, you can see how he used one of PhotoShelter’s “blank pages” to include two books available for sale through Blurb.

Smart!

VASOFOLIO

Vasilios Sfinarolakis is a photographer based in Woodbury, Connecticut. He calls his website “Vasofolio”, which is a great name because it does exactly what you’d expect it to — it shows off his 2 portfolios (one called “Brazil Election Day“, and the other is a collection of images from New York City).

He is using the photo wall on his front page, and has several videos available (click “Multimedia”) thanks to those handy “blank pages” within PhotoShelter.

His site is nice and clean — something I appreciate.

TIVFOTO

Steve Whitaker is a landscape photographer based in Yorkshire. He runs TivFoto, a website that sells prints of his images.

“I’m fascinated by the beauty of the light and land, my work shares this beauty with others,” he said. “My landscape photography covering The English Lake District, Yorkshire and the Yorkshire Dales, Yorkshire’s East Coast, Northumberland, Europe and some wordlwide locations including Australia.”

One cool part of his website (in addition to his portfolio) is his “Techniques” page where he talks about some of the tips and tricks he uses to make his images (“Blur Moving Water,” “Light Trails,” and “Pin Sharp Photos” are a few.)

ACTION, PLACES & PEOPLE

Richard McGibbon is a Sydney-based freelance photographer specializing in travel, landscape and high action sports. His blog is powered by WordPress and Graph Paper Press, and he’s using PhotoShelter’s photo wall and portfolio tools to really show off his work.

His portfolio contains 3 sections, “Action“, “Places“, and “People.”

A MUSIC PORTFOLIO

Ross Gilmore is a UK-based photographer who specializes in shooting musicians and concerts.

He is using a lot of the available PhotoShelter website features, including the photo wall, the “blank pages” to feature his video work, and the portfolio option to show his music portfolio.

STUNNING LANDSCAPES

Sven Seebeck is a German photographer based in the north of Finland. During the long summer nights he likes to explore the landscapes of Finland and the Scandinavian countries.

Sven’s website design is a customized Graph Paper Press WordPress site using PhotoShelter to power his color and black & white portfolios.

His blog is nicely designed and everything matches perfectly. Great job, Sven.

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I am always looking for things to include here in our Friday Shout-Outs – so if you have anything you think is worthy, let me know. One great way to do that is to post a note to Twitter with my name in it (@heygrover), and that way I won’t forget it later. Don’t have Twitter? Email me: grover-at-photoshelter-dot-com.