I love to visit other photographers web sites and I love to critique them to myself. I’m very proud of mine and when I set out to have it redesigned I had a few goals in mind (speed, load-time, functionality, mobile compatibility, etc.)
The one thing I knew that I did not want my site to be was a Flash site. IMO, Flash web sites are slow, take up resources on a persons computer, not very SEO-friendly, images/pages can’t be bookmarked in the browser, etc.
My web site is 99.9% html. The only Flash is on the front page to make the grey bars fade in and out. It’s not even needed and if you go to my site on a non-Flash enabled device the site still works the exact same way.
The reason I say all of this to you, fellow photographers, is this. I just bought my first iPhone, the new 3GS. It’s a great phone and I find myself using it way more than I thought. I use it waiting in line, at the airport, around the studio and home, sitting on the toilet (sorry) and sometimes even when I’m in front of my computer.
As I’ve been using it I’ve become extremely frustrated by the inability to view photographers web sites built in Flash. Let me give you a typical scenario. But let’s pretend that instead of me it’s a Photo Editor, Art Buyer, Creative Director or other potential client using the iPhone.
I’m sitting at the airport waiting for my flight, at a coffee shop, on the toilet, etc 
I’ve got time to kill so I break out my iPhone and log onto Twitter, Facebook or a favorite blog. A cool sounding link on one of those takes me to a photographers web site. I go there to discover some new talent and the I get a icon saying I can’t view the site because it’s in Flash. I leave the site and may never go back and check it out because I’m probably not going to take the time to write it down. I’ll just move on to another link.
I don’t have any graphs or charts to support the amount of creative execs who use iPhones, but almost every client I’ve shot for in the last year has one and uses it constantly. These are busy people. If they can find a good photographer while waiting in line at Starbucks they’re pretty pumped.
I listen to and read a lot of interviews with photo buyers and they all say they get around 100 emails or more every single day from photographers who want to show them their sites. Many say they can’t look at all of them and on some days they’re so busy they just come in and delete all 100 without even opening them.
If you can increase your chances of catching their eye while they’re getting their morning coffee, then you’re one ahead of the rest. But if they’re standing in line and click on the email you’ve sent and it takes them to a Flash site that they can’t see….well, you’ve just wasted what might be the only opportunity you could have had with them.
So it’s my humble opinion that Flash sites=FAIL if you’re a photographer.
Tags: iPhone, marketing, photo editors
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Hear that. (sorry, i keep saying that expression like I’m cool or something) I’ve been preaching this ever since your discussion on it in your Nash workshop, And that includes to designers who don’t like flash, don’t want to design for flash, but feel compelled to have an all-flash site. So thanks for the facts and insight on it David.
I bought my iPhone 3Gs’ day one and it was the same day i decided to remove all flash from my site. *up now
**Also from the likes of it too, Apple will not likely change their position on making flash viewable on their device. Too many virus and identity security issues come with it along with opening it up. Now a Hulu app though, send in my vote.
Brandon, your site looks and functions really nice.
Good work!
I’m so glad someone whose opinion others actually do take seriously has said it. Thank you.
However, if you could add any sort of addendum, I’d repeat what Esther Havens and I discussed this afternoon: if you are a photographer and you don’t use Twitter (and this really extends to other relevant social media,) you’re failing.
All good points David. I have been leaning on our non-flash blog like a crutch for some time now, and our portfolio site is still a livebooks flash site. I totally agree with you though, one day I will find the time to redesign the portfolio site to be more accessible and function without flash. I really dig the setup you have here at visual reserve. good post, thanks!
I think in addition to flash=fail, not following good web standards can lead to a lot of problems. Although my current site is running flash in my galleries, I have been burning the midnight oil redesigning the whole gallery portion to be more iphone friendly. With the amount of web smart devices these days, with their various flavors of browsers, following good design and standards will pretty much guarantee interoperability with many different devices. I found Designing with Web Standards by Jeffery Zeldman to be a great resource. Also, Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug.
So to sum it up, Flash is fail… and it was nice sitting in the Nashville workshop and finally hearing somebody say it besides myself in the photography community!
This post makes a statement for the development of Flash capabilities rather than a statement against a photographer’s site using Flash.
That the iPhone is not able to display Flash content is one reason why I still do not own one (and AT&T’s great service).
If I, as an Art Director, want to decide if a particular photographer is a right partner for my project I will review his work on the biggest screen possible. The tiny iPhone does not allow me to see every detail of his/her skills.
…and by the way: You could solve you little fade in ad out on your homepage with JS
Franco, the thing is, you may find a site throughsome random link and if it doesn’t load, you may never think to go back and read it on a bigger screen.
If it does load and looks promising small, you’ll be likely joy it down for later.
Which speaks again against the poor web capabilities of the iPhone. What about other site that use Flash?
Plus Franco, being a non-iPhone user, you have no idea how much you would use it to find talent. I’m posting this now from the beach. The iPhone tales productivity to a whole new level.
from the beach… rub it in
i am posting this from my awesome … cube …
Must remove my DIV tags ASAP!
As a web designer and a photographer I can’t agree more. I know there are some big-time-high-dollar shooters with three reps and an international clientele who have Flash websites. Great for them… but the SEO for Flash sites fail very fast and there are too many surveys that show that flash only sites really impress flash designers and photographers… clients far less.
Get in and see the images. Bookmark or save image for client presentation. Refer images to other people in the team.
And now… viewing on iTouch and iPhones is another important reason. Of course as a designer I would never want to judge a photographer from a small screen image… but I can sure get an idea of what the work looks like… and be able to receive interesting sites from others on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social medias that are not going to fade away… only get larger and larger. Maybe in different iterations… but they are here to stay.
I am not anti flash, I am anti flash for website architecture for an industry that needs to be as open and accessible as possible. I want photographers to succeed by getting the widest reach… not a subset.
I agree to a point: if a photographer is running their own site and has no knowledge of how Flash works, how to develop it or even keeps up with the technologies that run with it, Flash is useless to them. I’m sure, though, that most Photographers wouldn’t want to take the time or even can spare the time to try and get an deeper understanding of the platform and if they really wanted a Flash site for their work, it would be better for them to put it in the hands of a Flash developer that handle the task.
Where I don’t agree: the quick loading and the SEO. These parts points were valid maybe 3-5 years ago, but are quickly becoming moot. A capable developer could easily create a flash site that loads quick if they do it in a modular form…even animation can be done with code and the best part is that SEO can be implemented using swfAddress or even one of the many flash frameworks that are out there. So the technology for SEO on Flash is out there..it’s just not as simple for the non-developer to whip up..and ow many photographers really want to spend the time to have to research that and do it themselves? Not saying that they can’t…but if the focus is photography, why bother? That I understand.
Something I take with a grain of salt is the iPhone argument. It’s becoming more popular, but if one would argue that a site shouldn’t be built using a certain technology because a platform can’t view it, then one can argue to not buy into the platform for that same reason. We can get into an entirely different discussion on that.
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I’m so glad someone else is saying this! I’ve tweeted this one.
Amen! I have an iPhone and every time I’m led to a FLASH website I just roll my eyes and roll on…(can’t stand that missing Flash logo!). I listened to Dane Sanders on a CameraDojo and switched form Blogger to Wordpress(org). Now instead of going to (2) websites clients can go right to my about page -no searching, wondering about who I am and what I offer. [granted the site needs some tweaks] It just really opened my eyes to what is practical, pragmatic & potentially profitable! Enjoyed the right up; keep up the great work..oh, and stop by my non-Flash site! http://www.genehiltonphotography.com -Peace
Unless your me… who spent insane amounts of money changing from a Flash site to an all CSS/HTML website only to have everyone, including your clients say “Where’d your flash site go? We loved the massive images. It just wowed us!” I got that type of response over and over and over. People still love their flash websites. That’s why I went back to flash. Only for the clients.
Jeremy I remember your site well. It was an Amazing, well-built site. I don’t think the no-flash killed it. It just wasn’t built for the right audience IMO.
The photos weren’t big enough and it was way too deep of a site for casual browsing. It was hard to get an overview of your work.
Your current site would be an ideal site for HTML/CSS/Ajax rather than flash.
Flash sites are nearly - nearly - a dealbreaker for me. I always feel trapped looking at them. I just want a clear, concise, snappy view of somebody’s work. I want to know what they’re capable of in a glance, not be forced to view a site for 15 minutes to get an overview of what a photographer can do.
Dave, you just touched on yet another reason. I’m one of those ADs who is always looking at work on my iPhone. Flash DOES = dealbreaker in those instances. I am just not going to pick an artist because he or she has a flash site…I’m looking for good images.
For the naysayers - I can see the images just fine and don’t generally spend time checking whether the photo is in focus.
And saying “well, art directors shouldn’t use iPhones if they can’t accommodate Flash,” sort of has it backwards, doesn’t it.
Anyway, thanks again for your post. It’s a good one.
I respect your opinion Dave and mostly agree with it. I’m just telling you what the market and my clients are telling me. As photographers we have to listen to that. I learned the hard way.
I think Dave and Jeremy both have great points that can be solved with a simple script that checks for the viewing platform. If serving a page to an iPhone, a site shouldn’t try to deliver the same experience that Jeremy is saying works so well with those viewing on a wide screen monitor.