Several years ago, I established the Iowa City Photographers Guild as an organization that might help photographers meet, collaborate, inspire each other, and help one another. Part of my participation with the group, beyond my photography interests, is to help photographers with their websites. Below is a post I shared on the Iowa City Photographers Guild website, but I’m posting it here due to its relevance to web design. ~ Greg
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Iowa City photographer, Danforth Johnson, recently launched a new photography website to showcase galleries of his various works. It’s quite inspiring and worth a visit. Check it out by visiting:
DanforthJohnsonPhotography.com
Through his Facebook page, I’d noticed a lot of the great work that Danforth was doing, and at one point reached out to learn if he had a website. When I learned that he didn’t have one, I volunteered to help get him started. Photography like his has the ability to really inspire others and needs to be shown off. So, we met over coffee, and in a short while he’d walked through the basics of getting started, but none of the design work or content creation had been done.
I was really impressed as I checked back to see how the site was progressing. Danforth developed the entire site from design concept to navigation and layout.
The end result is a clean website that’s easy to navigate. The full-width edge-to-edge site header image really gives the site an elegant look. The galleries are concise and showcase a good variety of high quality photos in each category.
I felt good that I could be a part of helping to get the site launched and answer a few questions along the way.
One of the main goals I envisioned for the Iowa City Photographers Guild several years ago when starting the organization was to provide support to local photographers. My own skills and experience are with web design, business promotions, and technology support. So, that’s how I’ve tried to help.
Over time, the group has grown to become a community where photographers can help each other through collaborating on jobs, discussing tips and insights, as well as sharing knowledge and experience with new photographers.
I appreciate the positive feedback and support that so many have given and look forward to doing what I can to continue building up Iowa City’s photography community more.
Below is the feedback I received from Danforth after working together. It’s appreciative comments like these that really make it worthwhile.
22 January 2015
Danforth Johnson
I am an amateur photographer in Iowa City and a member of the Iowa City Photographers Guild.
Gregory approached me with some quick advice for how to better promote my work. After some initial conversation we decided to meet.
I found Gregory to be extremely knowledgable and amazingly helpful. He showed me (using a language I could understand) how to purchase a domain and the basics of setting up a website. After leaving our meeting I was left with a lot of homework to do but I was delighted to receive messages from him that very night with suggestions and references and a lot of hand-holding. When I explained what I was looking to achieve he went way out of his way to research how best to attain the look and feel I wanted. In short Gregory made what seemed like a daunting task feel feel completely within reach. The result is that in just a few days Gregory walked me through a process that has my brand new website up and running.
I can’t thank Gregory enough for his help, delivered in easy to understand terms, in an amiable manner, without any pretense and with complete understanding of my nearly tech illiterate background.
Thank you Gregory! And I can honestly say I recommend Gregory for any project, big or small.
Danforth Johnson