Show HN: Emulsion, the simple way to create a photography website

by ryanburke • 15 years ago

8 7 15 years ago

This is so cool! There's a ton of photographers out there who think the web is made of Flash and nothing else. At least their websites look that way. Small business Photography sites are notorious for overly long Flash intros, gratuitous effects, and generally just bad accessibility and SEO due to the overuse of Flash.

I love this idea. It's modern, looks great, it's easy, and the sites aren't a mess of Flash. I mean, don't get me wrong, Flash has its place and I can understand why so many photographers gravitate toward it but a lot of times I see user experience go by the wayside as they focus on making everything flash, fade, pop, fly, etc.

I do web development for a living and I always cringe when I see services like this because I feel like they're the competition. People see cheap beautiful and easy templates for $12/month and then a custom website for a minimum of $1300 and they're very likely to choose the former. But I like this anyway and actually thought of creating a similar system as an extra service to capture the segment of my market that wants it. Awesome.

ryanburke3• 15 years ago

Thanks for the kind words Bill!

I am not sure if we will ever be competition for custom sites. If people have the requirements or the money to make their own site, I think they will always go that route.

rguzman• 15 years ago

very cool. very nice looking, too.

biggest question in my mind: how does it integrate with my iphone? i don't mean for consuming, i mean for creating sites. i primarily take photos on my phone and they usually just live there because i never take the time to download them somewhere. it'd be cool if this had an app that made creating galleries and adding to galleries from my iphone super easy.

i do realize that the demographic you're trying to serve is not really the people who take photos with iphones, but overall point stands: it is an unnecessary step to take photos from cameras and put them in a computer before uploading them.

ryanburke3• 15 years ago

I completely agree it is an unnecessary step to take photos from cameras and put them on the computer before uploading. In the future I think we will explore ways to cut that step out, but for now, to your other point most of our audience is using digital SLRs that have no way to connect with a computer besides a clunky cable.

We did take some extra care to make sure the sites work out of the box for consuming on iPhones and other touch devices in the meantime.

nandorocker• 15 years ago

Beautiful stuff. Good product for an underserved demographic – professional photographers who need portfolios and not only don't want to deal with code, but also need stylish templates.

petervandijck• 15 years ago

Very, very nice. Your main differentiation, as I understand it, is that it works on iPad, correct? Don't be afraid to mention that clearer. Right now it's a little hidden.

In fact, show more clearly what it looks like on an iPad, and on an iPhone. And say something like "your website works on the web, on the iPhone and on the iPad".

I really like the simple pricing too.

Awesome.

ryanburke3• 15 years ago

Thanks, Peter.

Good point re: the iPad stuff. I would say the other main feature is that everything is edit in place (live-updating), which is also not clearly explained on the homepage at the moment and definitely an advantage over our competitors.

Show HN: Emulsion, the simple way to create a photography website

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