A review of Format member Louis Kerckhof’s website built on the Horizon Left theme with helpful tips and tricks you can apply to your own site.
Video transcript
Introduction to Louis Kerkhof's Website
Today, I'm reviewing the website of Louis Kerkhof.
Louis is a photographer and artist based in Brussels, Belgium. Best known for his portrait and fashion photography, Louis' work bridges the commercial and fine art worlds with a focus on queerness and gender expression through contemporary portraiture.
Building an Effective Photography Website
By following the tips and tricks discussed in this video, photographers will gain valuable insights on how to build a website that effectively represents their work, highlights their achievements, and provides a visually pleasing and user friendly experience.
Showcasing Your Best Work
Start with an overview of your best work. Lewis' site opens onto a striking title page which sets the tone for his site. This title page opens onto an overview gallery with some of his best work. This allows visitors to a site to get an instant snapshot of his style, compositions, and his skills in both colour and black and white photography.
Choosing the Right Theme
Choose the best theme for your viewing experience.
The design, typography, and other visual elements of your site should reflect the style and tone of your work without distracting from your images.
The Impact of Layout on Viewer Experience
Lewis has chosen the theme Horizon Left. This theme offers a left hand menu and large horizontal scroll. The horizontal layout of his site has the feeling of a magazine or diary, lending to the intimacy of the work. The size of the images allows viewers to focus on the detail of his imagery and the storytelling in each gallery.
Enhancing Galleries with Text
Add text into galleries to guide the viewing experience. On some of his gallery pages, Louis has added an introductory text to describe his project.
Adding text to your galleries of images is a great idea to add more context to the work. This is great practice for fine art galleries to describe the motivation of a series, but also for commercial projects to talk about how you fulfilled a client brief. Lewis' text provides added interest and context to his galleries of images.
Organizing Your Portfolio
Navigation Organize your images by type and series to tell the story of your practice. A visitor to Lewis' site will get an instant snapshot of his practice by reading his site's navigation: Personal, Editorial, Artists, Fashion Week.
When you open the drop down menu of each section, you can see he has organized these by series. In his Editorial section, he has organized his work by brand, which not only highlights his list of clients, but also allows you to see what he's achieved in each individual photoshoot.
When you click through on one of these editorial galleries, you'll see he's focused on a small, curated selection of images. Highlighting only a small, tailored selection of images on each project shows confidence and keeps the viewer engaged to look through other series.
The Importance of the About Page
About Page Show them who is behind the camera.
About Page is the most visited page on your site because people visiting your page want more context on you and your work. Louis' About Page features is a good succinct bio that covers his professional journey, background, and connects his photography style back to his identity.
His About page also includes a great headshot.
Headshots are a great way to humanize your website. Also, since Louis is a portrait photographer, this is a particularly important touch.
This page also features a list of clients, awards, exhibitions, and more. This type of list format is really smart because it allows visitors to skim your experience quickly.
Conclusion and Additional Resources
We hope these tips have been helpful. For more information on building different parts of your site, please consult format dot com slash help for our library of tutorial videos. Or reach out to our twenty fourseven customer experience team who will be happy to answer your questions. Thank you for choosing Format.
Still have questions? Reach us on our live chat or email us at info@format.com. We’re here to help!