Make the most of your Photography Blog

I’ve noticed a recent trend for photographers to display their recent work via a blog. This has definite merits:

1. They can do a shoot and on the same day, give that shoots clients a quick sneak peak of the shots
2. At the same time, they are constantly adding examples of their most recent work to their site. If a photographer’s site hasn’t been updated for 6 months or more, their site is probably not an accurate reflection of what they are capable of as it is my experience that photographers are constantly developing their craft.

However, while it’s great that photographers are using blogging to such great effect, the time it takes for their images to download could be turning viewers away. A user will only wait so long for an image to load before moving on.

So - what to do? I know how fussy you photographers are about displaying your images properly. And so you should be!

I will make the assumption that if you’re a photographer, you own and use Photoshop to re-touch your images. Did you know that Photoshop has a great tool for processing image size down without compromising on screen display quality?

It’s called Save for Web. If you use the right settings, it will knock your image sizes right down and make them much quicker to load, without taking away the screen display quality.

Here’s how to save your images for web

Step 1: Open your image file and re-sample it down to 72 dpi and approximately 800px wide (optimum width is dictated by your blog page width).  The Save for Web function cannot process a raw or high quality image several MB in size.

Step 2: Select “Save for Web & Devices” in the file menu (see image below)

Step 3: In the Save for Web settings, choose “Jpeg” and “Very High”.

The result? A high quality image that loads quickly - see below (I hope Shelly from smilephotography.com.au doesn’t mind me showing off one of her beautiful newborn images of my baby Jaden)!