Marten Czamanske Photography
01 Challenge
How does a photographer in Rochester, New York get editorial work for magazines across the country?
Marten Czamanske started his career as a photographer with Eastman Kodak Company. Later, he established his own commercial photography studio to focus on portraying the human side of business for local and national clients. In recent years, Marty has done an increasing amount of editorial photography for magazines, from as near as Buffalo and Syracuse, and as far as Texas and Minnesota.
Most new clients find Marty through the American Society of Media Photographers website (ASMP.org). They can see a few of his photographs on the site, but come to Marty’s website to see his complete portfolio.
Marty had a website that seemed, in his words, to be half-assed—it wasn’t doing what needed to be done. The site was very slow, and it took a long time to view all his work.
In discussing the development of a new website, he specified that it should:
- Focus heavily on the work, with little extraneous information or distraction.
- Have a clean design, appealing to a universal client base.
- Offer a unique presentation of the work.
- Be truly minimal—almost as if there were no site interface at all.
02 Solution
Despite Marty’s specifications, Dumbwaiter Design tried a few complicated site design ideas early-on, and they all failed. We finally developed a design that would showcase only the work—any navigation or interface elements would disappear when not needed.
Each photograph in the portfolio would have its own unique color background, appearing as a constant width stripe across the screen, equal in height to the image, to both anchor it on the page and set off the colors in the image.
Image thumbnails and the simple three choice menu (people/industry/biography) appear only when you roll over the image. We also minimized the mouse clicks necessary to view images, using mouse rollovers to reach the bulk of the content.
We created the site in Adobe Flash Professional, and made it dynamically driven, so that Marty can update it himself, which for a busy photographer is quite frequently. Top photographers in New York City update their websites with new images every day, and now Marty can too!
03 Result
The new Marten Czamanske Photography website is fast, minimal, stylish, and unique.
It has effectively presented his portfolio to an entirely new group of clients, moving from mostly commercial photography, in the Rochester area, to magazine editorial work outside the area. He estimates that now only one in fifteen of his clients is in Rochester.
“The website has definitely helped my business grow nationally,” Marty confirmed.
