So--how do you design a website for a photography business that doesn't look just like every other photographer's website?
When I was a kid we didn't have a lot of pictures on the walls. But we had magazines--Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post--and I began to be aware of photography. Then when I was about eight, I got the flu. It was bad, really bad. I was home from school for weeks.
"I can't just stay and play with you," Mom said. "I have the house to clean, and the cooking and laundry to do. So here, you can read these, or just look at the pictures." And with that, she dumped a whole arm load of yellow-covered magazines on the foot of my bed.
They were National Geographics, and in two minutes I was totally in love with photography. Bright, colorful, photography. Images that leap off the page and grab you by the eyeballs and yank you into a faraway corner of the world. The only thing I didn't like about that magazine was their signature color: to me it meant school buses, and that meant long dreary hours in the classroom instead of at large, roaming the world at my own sweet will.
Now as an adult, I hate mail with a passion, but traveling from place to place I often have to sort through a huge bin of it that has accumulated at the post office. Junk, junk, and more...but wait! ... there's that bright yellow border that means my National Geographic has arrived. A jewel hidden under the dross!
In setting up my business, and choosing a design for the website, I had intended to go with a medium grey, since that's the classic neutral used by most professional photographers. But my favorite color all my life has been a lovely blue-green, in any shade from deep teal to pale Tiffany blue. Did I dare move away from the neutral? Of course! I am not your ordinary photographer, and I don't like grey all that much. If National Geographic can make a go of it with a horrible color like school-bus yellow, then it's a lovely shade of aqua for me. Wait! no, not one shade. I'll take 'em all.