Portfolio: New Format, Updated

Todd Owyoung·
Music Photography
·1 min read·1796 views

Portfolio updated

I've just updated my concert photography portfolio. Aside from retiring several images and adding a few new selections, the biggest change is a standardized height for the entire set.

Vertical and horizontal images are now sized so that they are both orientations are a maximum of 483 pixels tall. You can see how the new formatting looks here:

https://ishootshows.com/portfolio/

The intent of this shift is to generally minimize the screen real estate needed to view the piece, as well as to provide a more uniform viewing experience for lower resolution monitors, where the previous 750 pixel height of vertical images might be a factor.

What do you think of the change?

Is the viewing experience better, worse? I'd love to have your feedback on the change, let me know what you think!

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Todd Owyoung

Todd Owyoung is an internationally published music photographer based in New York City. He specializes in music lifestyle, concert, and celebrity portraits. He is proud to be a Nikon Ambassador for Nikon USA.

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16 Responses

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  2. Trying to make a site ‘backwards compatible’ for visitors with lower-res displays or wanky browsers is always an issue. In this case, I think your move is a good one, since you also have the playback control below the images to contend with, but it does suck to have to make the portrait-oriented shots that much smaller. The other school of thought is that if they can’t get with the new millenium and get a “real” display (and browser), then too bad. Of course, I don’t do it for a living, so your concerns differ.

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  3. Hey Doug, thanks for the feedback. You’re right, ultimately it’s a trade-off between marginalizing the impact of the vertical images and creating a more fluid user experience.

    This shift in the presence the vertical images have required me to make some different decisions regarding sequencing, too.

    On the other hand, even on larger monitors, I do think a standardized height to the image set adds a bit of polish, image orientation/content aside.

    Thanks again for your input on this, very helpful.

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  4. It is interesting… more compact. I won’t even begin to pretend I have an idea of what you guys above are talking about. And color me stupid [seriously, go ahead], but if they are the same pixels, why IS the vertical smaller, if all you are doing is rotating it?

    That being said, I don’t think it has a huge impact — I liked the large images, I think, but it also makes it a bit more fluid.. and if it helps other people, then why not? Question is, do you think it will have an impact on the people you are trying to market… companies and such who want to see larger photos? If not, I think how it stands is alright.

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  5. Hey Chris, thanks for the feedback. The images are the same height – the widths are different. The aspect ratio of the images is maintained, so the vertical images are now smaller since their height is constrained.

    I think that for people on laptops, the change is going to have the biggest impact. For resolutions that can accommodate a larger vertical size, I think there’s still a benefit in a tighter presentation.

    Not everyone is rocking 23″ Apple Cinema Displays, especially people on the go. :)

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  8. Hey Ian, thanks for the comment. The interface isn’t change, so you should be able to advance to the next frame just as you did before.

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  9. This is really growing on me. I thought I wouldn’t like the smaller photos as I was reading the post, but the consistent viewing experience makes up for it in spades.

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  10. Hey Jason, good to know. At first the smaller vertical shots were very noticeable to me, but I think that it’ll grow on me as well. Thanks for your thoughts.

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  11. Hi Todd. So, I’ve just looked at the new diggs for the third time in so many days and I think it’s finally growning on me. The one thing I will say is that the new format REALLY places the emphasis on the landscape shots and, since there are so many of them, the portrait shots feel a little more crunched than they are. Have you tried using either more or less spacing between the photos?

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  12. yeah i agree with chris. it almost seems like the portraits are like.. afterthoughts now instead of their own pieces.

    have you thought about making a horizontal portfolio and a separate vertical portfolio? i don’t know if that’s exactly standard practice but it’d bring attention back to the portraits.

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  13. It’s interesting that you bring the issue of separate portfolios up Julia. At a recent meeting with an agent, I was told not to alternate between portrait and landscape from page to page because it’s distracting to the person looking at the book.

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  14. Hey Chris, thanks for your thoughts on this. I took a long time for this format to work for me, but I think that I will probably end up using some variation of this where the images are more uniform in terms of flow.

    I will have to experiment with how spacing affects viewing, thanks for the suggestion.

    Reply

  15. Hey Julia, thanks for your thoughts on this. I do agree, the portraits are marginalized to the point where the size impacts the orientation of images included.

    I think two separate portfolios is an interesting idea, or at least dividing the portfolio into sections, with all vertical images and then all horizontal images, might serve a similar function of standardized/uniform viewing experience.

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  16. I think all vertical and then all horizontal might be a good solution. The impression I got from my meeting was that since there were not tons of images, (less than 20) it wouldn’t be a problem to give more emphasis to each image by either making only one image viewable at a time or by grouping them by orientation (PPP LLL PPP LLL PPP)

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